Portrait Of A Killer: Jack The Ripper -- Case Closed (Berkley True Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)

Oh, really? Academic librarian James Bunnelle has posted a reader review at Barnes and Noble that describes a book called "Vacher l'éventreur et les crimes sadiques" by Alexandre Lacassagne, which was published in 1899. Among other ghastly attractions, it contains the first published photographs of victims murdered by Jack the Ripper, namely-you guessed it!-the morgue photo of Catherine Eddowes and the bedroom photo of Mary Kelly. Now let's see here: (a) Sickert was a news freak who was fascinated by criminality and sensationalism, (b) he often worked from photographs, and (c) he was fluent in French and moved to France a year before Lacassagne's book was published in Paris. (Can you say "reasonable doubt"?) There's a good reason why real historians don't publish wild claims until they can survive an annoying little thing called "peer review" ... namely the critical response that this book is now receiving. Read it at your library.

The author has accumulated an enormous amount of circumstantial evidence against Sickert, but Portrait of a Killer is amateurishly written, sloppily executed, and poorly edited. For a famous crime writer, Cornwell has produced a weak book unlikely to stand up to scrutiny or survive the brunt of attacks by Ripperologists the world over, written as it has been for the uncritical light reader. Every facet of Portrait of a Killer seems rushed, as though Cornwell wrote with little consideration for structure and then submitted the manuscript without rereading, rewriting, or thinking it through as a whole. The awkward title alone suggests Cornwell's hesitations: 'Portrait of a Killer / Jack The Ripper / Case Closed.' Why not 'Walter Sickert: Portrait of a Killer,' or 'Walter Sickert: Jack The Ripper?' Why the reservation about damning her subject in the title, as she does so heartily in the text?

For Cornwell damns Sickert before she's made her case, and from the first page. She immediately refers to Sickert as a killer as if this were an objective fact, and as a 'psychopath,' a phrase she bandies about loosely and without proper definition throughout the book. By contemptuously referring to his rented East End studios as 'ratholes' upon their first mention, Cornwell makes her biases entirely clear. As a result, Sickert's habit of long walks become 'obsessive walks,' and his love of walking at night becomes evidence of his psychopathology, when night walking was also the habit of Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Paul Bowles, Walt Whitman, Thoreau, and Charles Baudelaire. Sickert's penchant for watching and studying people is also interpreted as a sign of his predatory madness, rather than as an attribute common to most visual artists, actors, and writers - to say nothing of detectives and crime writers. Describing a poem sent to the police and signed 'Jack the Ripper' which she believes was written by Sickert, Cornwell describes the poem's rhymes as "not those of an illiterate or deranged person." Since she believes Sickert was a "psychopath," by what criteria was he a "psychopath" but not a "deranged person?" Cornwell says of the broken, middle-aged Sickert, "He subsisted in filth and chaos. He was a slob and he stank," but on the next page states, "he traversed the surface of life as a respectable, intellectual gentleman."

The same easy logic the author uses to turn the lights on Sickert could be used on anyone, at anytime. Cornwell has been obsessed with and made a career of criminal behavior, death, and murder herself; by her own what - makes - madness equation, shouldn't she explain her own morbid preoccupations to the reader?

In light of the many sound accomplishments found here, it's unfortunate how many errors in judgement Cornwell has made, especially if "staking her career" on this volume as she says she is. Sickert is portrayed on any number of pages as manipulative, bizarre, cunning, misogynistic, treacherous, desperate for attention, and dangerously arrogant - Cornwell states these are facts about his character - but provides almost no sources for her information, when this should have been scrupulously documented. The worst others have to say about Sickert comes to almost nothing. Under oath, former teacher Whistler says, "Walter has a treacherous side to his character," his first wife's sister, who clearly disliked Sickert, perhaps with good reason, says "they cannot know what he really is as you do," and Clive Bell refers to him a man of "no standards." In exaggerated fashion, Cornwell calls Sickert a "master of disguise" - a master, not just an afficionado - but again provides no sources.

Viewing early drawings by Sickert-or, she admits, perhaps drawn by his father-Cornwell believes she already sees clear evidence of a woman-hater and a violent, disturbed mind. But when the reader refers to these drawings, the figures are hardly more than stick figures; one male figure Cornwell ominously perceives as "about to spring" at a defenseless woman looks more like a hemorrhoid sufferer hesitantly lowering himself onto a cold toilet. Yet two Ripper letters containing drawings obviously done by a talented hand are called "crude." An in-profile caricature of a woman is said to have "an ugly mole" on the nose, but the "mole" is clearly just an oversized, if still unsightly, nostril. Readers will get the sense that one thing Cornwell isn't is a visual artist, a race she seems to have little understanding of or sympathy with.

Sickert's relationships with his wives is barely touched upon until the end, and what first wife Ellen thought about her husband, whom she loved until her death, is never made clear. Since Cornwell believes Sickert was impotent all his life and perhaps left without a penis after three traumatic childhood surgeries, the reader should know a great deal about his marital life, and what his wives felt about marrying a man only to discover a eunuch in their honeymoon beds.

Cornwell, in sadly PC fashion, quotes her mentor Dr. Marcella Fierro as saying "a woman has the right to walk around naked and not be raped or murdered." In the theoretical and idealized Garden of Eden of liberalism, that certainly may be the case. Reality, again, is something else. Cornwell embarrasses herself by stooping so low to make an unnecessary case for the Ripper's desperate, tragic victims.

The author should have spent several more years on this book and then written a scholarly, definitive account of her presently unfinished investigation. Why the rush to publication? Cornwell's errors and misjudgements throughout will only raise powerful doubts about her methods and conclusions, and prejudice the reader against the more solid fruits of her labor.

Walter Sickert was in France while at least four of the five canonical murders took place. There are nearly a half-dozen independent sources, that we know of, that attest to this fact. Only one of those sources, a letter, is mentioned by Cornwell, and then summarily dismissed because there was no post-mark to prove when it was sent.

Ms. Cornwell claims to have found a match between Sickert's DNA and the Ripper. This is not true. She found a sequence of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) on both letters signed "Jack the Ripper" and letters written by Walter Sickert. This is an important distinction. mtDNA, unlike nuclear DNA (which was not found on any of the correspondence), is not unique. A particular mtDNA sequence can be shared by anywhere between 1% and 10% of the population. Ignore the countless problems of DNA contamination and provenance that comes with examining documents over a century old, and you still have the problem that these "Ripper letters" are known to be hoaxes (nearly 600 of them were sent to the press and police from all corners of the globe in 1888 and beyond). On top of that, Sickert's DNA no longer exists - he was cremated after his death. There is no way to tell whether the mtDNA found on Sickert's letters was his, his wife's, a friend's, or that of any of a thousand researchers and students who have handled them in the past sixty years.

Although Patricia claims that the evidence she has amassed would be enough for a jury in 1888 to say "Hang him!", I have to disagree. At best, she has found partial evidence to suggest that perhaps Walter Sickert hoaxed one or more Ripper letters. But even if that were proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, there is nothing to suggest that these "Ripper letters" were actually from the murderer. Most students of the case believe them all, with the possible exception of the "From Hell" letter, to be hoaxes.

I would suggest that readers interested in the case pick up Phil Sugden's "Complete History of Jack the Ripper", which was just recently reprinted in paperback. Alternatively, you can check out the web site "Casebook: Jack the Ripper," which contains a great deal of information on Cornwell's book, Walter Sickert, and all manner of Ripper-related topics.