Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper -- Case Closed

Rating:
Summary: Give Up The Ghost
Review: My, how we loathe to surrender our myths. If GOD were to drop down and reveal personally the identity of Jack the Ripper to our multitudes, it's quite doubtful even then that any sort of contentment would overtake the bleating throngs of Ripper-chasers. In any case, a few points:

For one, "circumstantial evidence" does not carry the flimsy, pejorative connotation within the justice system that it does among the general population. As other reviewers have pointed out, very strong legal cases can be made (and are, routinely) on the basis of "circumstantial evidence." In fact, the circumstantial can be considered stronger even than some types of direct evidence, such as eyewitness accounts, which have been much studied and found to be notoriously unreliable. As an astute reader will notice, Cornwell is smartly careful to qualify, quite meticulously, the recorded statements of eyewitnesses.

And even such things as fingerprints and DNA can fall into the realm of the circumstantial--if, for instance, a suspect's presence is verified by prints but time-frame is critical and cannot be ascertained. Additionally, circumstantial evidence in the form of, for example, the "ha ha's" in various Ripper letters is actually quite significant stuff. The fact that, in the cultural and historical context of Cornwell's focus, the expression was an American linguistic convention but not a British one is just the sort of "circumstantial" oddity that should solicit serious investigative attention.

And Cornwell's tentativeness--her "maybes" "perhapses" and "possiblys" that are curling the nose hairs of so many of her detractors here--are actually the requisite marks of a judicious investigator. As Cornwell herself points out to the reader, even forensic experts discussing DNA results make a deliberate practice of doing so only in terms of probabilities, even when the experts themselves consider the results conclusive or damning. This is convention, and it's fully necessary and appropriate. Anyone trotting among the educated while spouting brazen absolutes is inviting a precious beating, and Cornwell is plenty smart enough to know this. Incidentally, even the phrase "case closed" does not out of necessity imply an absolute. Cases all over are routinely closed by all sorts of investigators and legal types, for all sorts of reasons, including the gathering of evidence that is convincing EVEN WHILE IMPERFECT. Hey, present-day Scotland Yard is impressed with Cornwell's analysis. Not too shabby.

The weakest part of Cornwell's otherwise compelling argument is her very Freudian explanation for Sickert's murderous exploits (i.e. the potentially deformed and butchered penis). Rather than venturing into that ever-suspect, murky territory, she could have skipped over the issue of motivation entirely. Most people sufficiently knowledgeable about psychopathy, as Cornwell clearly is--and I am referring here to psychopathy in the clinical, DSM IV sense of the term (as opposed to the popular, oft-misguided Hollywood rendition)--understand that, ultimately, motivation for the abhorrent behavior of psychopaths is rather beside the point. Their compulsive, obsessive, destructive penchants are inborn and do not necessarily correlate with any external factor or event. Some psychopaths have experienced violent, abusive childhoods, but many have not. Some engage in violent behavior, and some do not. Cornwell provides a particularly good description of psychopathic characteristics in general. And current research into the brain function of psychopaths is, in fact, beginning to reveal distinct organic neurological abnormalities that probably have a genetic basis. In other words, it's looking more and more to be the case that psychopaths are not made by bad parents, but that, in fact, they are born.

But as non-psychopathic people, the rest of us nearly always want to have clear, plausible antecedents--explanations--for horrific things to which we simply cannot relate. And this is why, one could readily suppose, Cornwell cannot really be faulted for feeling compelled to provide an identifiable motive. We don't want to believe that someone like Walter Sickert was simply born without the neurological foundation for a conscience, an unpreventable and incomprehensible deficit that led him to mutilate people for no other reason than that his talented-but-nevertheless-damaged brain was chemically stimulated and gratified by his acts. Admittedly, one could read every last scrap of text depicting the psychopathic nature and--lacking personal, face-to-face experience with one of these inscrutable beasts--still fail profoundly to "appreciate" what psychopathy actually is: evil without a sponsor. Really, it most likely runs no deeper than the entropic, frenetic looping of electricity among faulty neural pathways. This is huge, and it holds dire implications--for both the legal system in particular and for society in general. In a very fundamental and real way, psychopaths are not human.

And the structure of the text, clearly problematic for many readers (though not this one), seems--more than anything else--a complex side-effect of the need to wrangle and weave multiple, "swim-lane" chronologies into a single stretch of fabric. No mean feat, and Cornwell pulls it off laudably. The alleged "tangential" and "boring" excursions are interesting at worst and necessary at best. We are, after all, concerning ourselves with intricate events dated over a century ago. And far more remarkable than the evidence missing from Cornwell's study is the amount that was still available! With all of the various documents providing rare insight into Walter Sickert's character and whereabouts--and there are a lot! (all duly cited in the back of the text)--the presiding fact that none has yet to render Cornwell's suppositions implausible is far more impressive than critics would have us believe. And, finally, as to the charges that Cornwell demonstrates some incriminating bias by announcing her suspect-of-choice in the beginning of her book: well, duh. Her thesis is that Walter Sickert committed the long-unsolved atrocities. She then proceeds to tell us why she thinks this. This approach is fully customary.

_Portrait of a Killer_ is an exhaustively researched effort and is overwhelmingly deserving of attention. A smart, solidly respected author has staked her very reputation on it, and she has not appeared to do so foolishly. Time to give up the ghost, me thinks.

Rating:
Summary: She convinced me, but...
Review: Cornwell, using almost entirely circumstantial evidence, did convince me of Sickert's guilt as the Ripper. Eventually she brought in letters, pictures drawn by him, and DNA evidence to give more credence to her theories.
What I did not like was the way she dumped me into the story with so little lead-in. It's as though the first chapter were missing. There was very little about other suspects of the time, and little to show how she latched onto Sickert as the obvious candidate. But we were suddenly there, discussing his (supposed) physical deformities and his seemingly depraved outlook on women, without so much as a thank you.
All in all, an amazing effort on her part. I just thought her theories took precendence over her literary abilities.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I'm a great fan of Patricia Cornwell and have read all her fiction books, but this book was a disappointment. While the title promised that the Jack the Ripper is now "case closed" the "evidence" presented in this book is hardly convincing. Perhaps worth reading if you are interested in a description of the Ripper murders or to get a sense of what life was like for the poorer classes in London in the 1880's.

Rating:
Summary: Well Researched Speculation
Review: While exhaustively researched, this book makes only a midly compelling case that Sickert is Jack the Ripper. It is extremely long on speculation and forensic detail, and extremely short on deduction or evidence. A great deal of time is spent discussing the Ripper letters and postcards and their watermarks, but there has long been questions about the veracity of most of these documents. At best, Ms. Cornwell paints Sickert as an unlikable individual who may have indeed taunted police for his own perverse pleasure without having anything to do with the actual crimes. After all the hype, I was more or less disappointed in what this book actually delivered.

Rating:
Summary: Questionable at best.
Review: Ms. Cornwell spent a lot of money and time to support a theory as fact. It is obvious from her book and the numerous specials that I have seen. However, the known facts of the Ripper murders still do not bear out Walter Sickert, her choice for the killer. Ms. Cornwell never, for instance, showed that Walter Sickert had anything more than an artist's knowledge of anatomy. Precise removal of internal organs dictates that Jack the Ripper must have had some medical knowledge.

While DNA and other modern forensic tests were used, they were largely inconclusive (due to the destruction of proteins etc over time and the over handling or restoration/preservation treatment of evidence), which does not keep the publisher from mentioning them on the blurb, as if they formed the "smoking gun," as it were.

I believe that Ms. Cornwell saw Sickert's paintings and was so horrified by them that she pre-concluded his guilt. (An understandable bias to be sure, but still a bias.) Considering the fact that the paintings in question all used the same perspective as the evidence photographs which they so closely resemble, Occam's razor states that Sickert must have seen them. Otherwise, it is simply too far-fetched for me to believe that the killer and the police photographer chose the same angles of aspect. If the paintings were indeed done by the killer, they should have had a more intimate appearance--something that only the killer could have done.

She did prove that Sickert had an avid interest in the Ripper murders, however, interest in the Ripper murders does not a killer make. (I, after all, am interested and I have never killed anything bigger than a mosquito. It was self defense, as well, and I promise that it brought me no joy.) Is it possible that Sickert committed later murders after the Ripper style, as Ms Cornwell suggests? Absolutely. Copy cat serial killings go on all the time.

For a better, less biased approach to Jack the Ripper, I direct the reader to _The Complete History of Jack the Ripper_ by Phillip Sudgen.

If anything, Ms Cornwell is only capable of building a circumstantial case against Walter Sickert. While this may have caused his conviction and death via the laws and mores of the time, I believe that the wrong man would have been hanged. I also believe that she owes the surviving relatives of Mr. Sickert a sincere and heart-felt apology.

Ms. Cornwell (or anyone else, for that matter) is free to email me if she wishes to discuss these or any other matters. I can easliy be found via links on TheSpacePort.net .

Rating:
Summary: This book is ENTERTAINING!
Review: She's a pulp fiction author. She has to overstate her case even though she has to know she didn't really prove it. She wants to make money off her name, and a scholarly discourse on one suspect isn't what her readers are interested in. I do agree that the chonology is very confusing and given that people with a lot of knowledge about the ripper case aren't going to like her book that much, it would have been a good idea to provide a summary of the murders and the other theories early in the book. Her failure to pursue things that might weaken her case is a little irritating and distracting too. For instance when she tries to link other murders to the ripper/Sickert. OK there was a brutal murder when Sickert was in town. Well, how many brutal murders were there the week before when he wasn't in town? Put it in context!

Rating:
Summary: One of the most interesting true-crime books I've read.
Review: I must say I've been shocked to see some of the vicious negative responses this book has sparked. In my mind it has been very underrated. Cornwell's style in writing this book is, perhaps, not the best for a work of its type, and I think this may have made it difficult for many readers to pick out the significant points she does make. There are parts that almost have the feel of a narrative novel, and the author does present countless trails of speculation which are interesting but not provable. However, I feel the need to respond to some of the criticisms of this work that I've seen by highlighting a few things.

Cornwell's work here definitely does prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Walter Richard Sickert wrote a large number of the Ripper letters that were sent to the Metropolitan Police. There are definite DNA matches from stamps on at least three of the letters. The Ripper used several kinds of stationery which Sickert was also known to use, and indeed it has been proven that some sheets used for Ripper letters came from the the same package of 24 sheets as some letters Sickert sent to his acquaintances. There are countless other details that tie Sickert to the Ripper letters and I have no doubt that he wrote most of them.

The problem comes in that people seem to be assuming that ALL Patricia Cornwell has proven here is that Sickert wrote Ripper letters. It takes only a little mental puzzle-piecing to see that this is not the case. Some of the Ripper letters (written by Sickert) hint at events yet to come, often connected with future murders - events that did indeed end up playing out as predicted. The Ripper letters also show a knowledge of details about the victims and their murders that were never publicly released. These are things Sickert could not possibly have known unless he committed the murders (or at least some of them), or was somehow connected to the person that did.

The author makes mention of an incident where Sickert claimed that he had once stayed in the very room where Jack the Ripper once dwelled. He stated that the landlord had told him the identity of the killer, but that he could no longer remember the name. This seems unlikely in the extreme. Cornwell points out that when he was 80 years old, Sickert could still remember and correctly spell the name "Maharaja Meerzaram Guahahapaje Raz Parea Maneramapam Mucher," which he had come across while passing a church memorial with his father when he was a young boy. Sickert had an astounding memory. Assuming for a moment that Sickert was NOT Jack the Ripper, it would still be obvious that he had an intense fascination with the killer, as evidenced by his having penned many Ripper letters and also in his violent art, some pieces of which make direct references to the Ripper killings. I find it unbelievable that someone so obsessed with Jack the Ripper would fail to recall his real name after having it revealed to him. So it is almost certain that Sickert was lying about the incident, possibly to shift suspicion away from himself.

I have seen some people mistakenly assume that Cornwell is arguing that the Ripper was left-handed. This can only be a case of mis-reading, since she is not saying anything of the sort. Cornwell argues that most of the victims seem to have had their throats cut from behind in a way that indicates a RIGHT-handed perpetrator. She also makes note of the fact that Sickert was known to be primarily right-handed, but that he was capable of writing with his left hand, as evidenced by a video. She makes this point only to show another method he may have used to disguise his handwriting (writing with the left hand rather than the right).

Some people have complained that Cornwell did not include enough of the art works she references in her book. Many of these are easy enough to look up on the internet - Sickert was a well-known artist in his day and his works are by no means obscure.

I was shocked to see one person respond by saying that Sickert looked like a very nice man based on the photos of him in the book, and that he did not look like a killer. What does a killer look like? It is a fact that a large percentage of rape and murder victims are assailed by someone they knew and trusted, a "nice person." We've long since moved out of the days where supposed criminals are identified based on physical features that are assumed to fit the profiles of murderers, rapists, thieves, etc. A murderer can be sinister, ugly, and frightening in appearance, or they could just as well look like the sweetest and most mellow person imaginable. A murderer can look like anyone.

So was Walter Sickert the murderer known as Jack the Ripper? We can't be 100% sure, but it seems very likely. Cornwell has shown that he certainly had the opportunity to have committed the murders (he was in the right place at the right time), he fits the profile of a violent psychopath (though I must admit this word is beginning to sound a little hackneyed what with the number of times Cornwell uses it), and he had a very plausible motive. The fact that several other similar murders (other than the six we hear about most often) occurred in the decades following the highly publicized Ripper spree, and that these murders occurred within miles of wherever Sickert was living at the given time, is also very suspicious.

As I stated earlier, Cornwell could have written in a style more suited to this type of book. Many of her important points (and they ARE there!) get hidden between her numerous speculations and historical asides. I did, however, very much enjoy reading these seemingly tangential passages, as they actually paint a very good picture of life in London's East End during the late 19th century and the methods and tools utilized by criminal inspectors of the time. She has clearly done a phenomenal amount of research and I think she's hit upon something very big. So far her theory seems to be the most plausible one out there.

Two thumbs up!

Rating:
Summary: Could not continue past Tape 5
Review: Believe me. I tried. I really tried to finish this book on tape, but Kate Reading's manner of speaking drove me crazy. Her cadence and over enunciation, in my opinion, detract from the "story" she is reading, rather than enhance it. For example: I was so distracted by the way she over pronounced "Pennsylvania" I found I couldn't concentrate on Patricia Cornwell's text discussing the medical examiner's office in that state & had to rewind the tape. That's about when I gave up on this book on tape. I thought about getting the book to fill in the rest, but honestly I am really not enraptured with the tale on it's own feet. I'm not sure if my interest waned due to Kate Reading's recitation, or whether I was just bored by the needless inventories of victims' clothing or the many graphic paragraphs dedicated to Walter Sickert's genital surgeries & the possible conditions of his hospital stays.

It seems that people interested in Jack the Ripper should probably *read* this book for nothing else than to say they've studied Cornwell's Sickert as Ripper Theory. I think Cornwell has a lot of interesting points about Walter Sickert as the Ripper, & her research, especially into Victorian London, seems impeccable. I'd recommend staying away from the book on tape in favor of the reading the actual book though.

Rating:
Summary: A complete wate of time and paper
Review: I bought this book 2-3 months ago in an airport. It has taken me this long to finish it, because I kept putting it down in disgust. I kept coming back to it assuming that it wouldn't be a best seller if it didn't have some good qualities....I was wrong.

I have never reviewed an item at Amazon before, but this is such a shoddy piece of journalistic trash, that if I can save someone some money, then it is worth the time and energy.

Cornwell does a terrible job of presenting any kind of case. Her "suspect" may have been a terrible person, but there is no evidence in here at all. If someone has the time and energy to go through and and count up all of the times "maybe and possibly" show up inthis book....you'd get some sense of how poorly this was investigated.

Bottom line, skip this book at all costs.

Rating:
Summary: monontonously irrelevant details = boring
Review: do i really care to know how a virginia forensic team would have handled a crime scene from the 1800's? umm, no. there are so many needless details in this book that lead me to skim and scan to find the good parts. like others say, there are way too many "probably" this and "probably" that statements. regardless of all the nice reviews from the press, i think this book is a mess! i liked "The Last Victim" though. try it!