Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed (Patricia Cornwell)

It is sad that men whose lives and careers were touched by the Ripper cases would spin theories almost as baseless as some of those offered by people who weren’t even born at the time of the crimes.
Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed (Patricia Cornwell)

Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed by Patricia Cornwell

Book Review

Reviewed June 10, 2008
Rating: 0 stars

You know that old logic statement: Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore Socrates is mortal? I think it was Woody Allen who did a classic parody of that statement to illustrate some kind of skewed logic: Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore all men are Socrates—and homosexual.

That’s the kind of logic you’ll find in this book. Patricia Cornwell, whose years as a crime novelist apparently have her thinking she can solve real-life crimes, does what any good crime novelist does: picks out a killer, then works backwards from there to make the facts fit the suspect. I certainly hope she does a better job of it in her novels, because the theory she presents in this book is crap—badly-reasoned and full of supposed “proof” that actually embarrassed my logical faculties with its stupidity.

Walter Sickert, the rather eccentric British artist, has been put forth as a Ripper candidate before, though never very convincingly. Cornwell, however, claims to have created a fool-proof case against him. Here’s a taste of her “evidence”:

“Jack” is a name sometimes found in Shakespeare’s plays. Sickert had read and enjoyed Shakespeare.
The killer sent letters to the police in which he taunted them as “fools” and used the phrase “ha ha”. Sickert’s father sometimes used the word “fools”. Sickert’s friend James Whistler, an American, had a loud and annoying laugh.
Sickert had a fistula as a child—Cornwell, for some reason, decides it was penile rather than anal—and therefore couldn’t have sex as an adult (this is Cornwell’s assertion, although Sickert married three times and reputedly fathered several illegitimate children). He therefore must have hated women and wanted to murder them.
There is no proof that Sickert was in London during the killings—but then, Cornwell has not found proof that he wasn’t (although at least two letters from friends and family of Sickert’s mention his being in France at the time of the murders).
Jack the Ripper cut his victims’ throats. Sickert sometimes drew pictures of women wearing necklaces that kind of, if you squint and tip your head a little, look like “beads of blood” or slashed throats.
Sickert sometimes signed his letters to newspapers with the name “Mr. Nemo”—the same name on some of the Ripper letters sent to the police/newspapers. Obviously, no one else in Victorian England had the rudimentary grasp of Latin required to make what is basically a variation on being “Anonymous”.

Looking over that list, I feel a bit of a chill run down my spine—I share several of those characteristics! I’ve called people “fools”, I use the phrase “ha ha”, I’ve used the name “Jack” for a fictional character, and I have used the pseudonymous surname “Nemo” in the past. OH MY GOD I’M JACK THE RIPPER. I don’t think I was in London during the murder spree—but heck, I can’t prove I wasn’t, can I?

But seriously. Cornwell takes us through this embarrasingly illogical litany with breathless sincerity, apparently 100% convinced that we will be as bowled over by this evidence as she is. I can laugh at it now, but when I was actually reading it, it made me rather sad for her; I felt the same embarrassment and pity for the author’s poor deluded brain that I felt when reading that theory about Abe Lincoln being gay—like, maybe you had some kind of a stroke or you’re going a bit senile or your life is just kind of nuts right now, because otherwise? This theory? There is no excuse for it.

But! But she has DNA evidence! Or so she says. I stopped feeling sorry for her when I read about the DNA evidence, because hey, maybe she could pull this theory up by its bootstraps and make something of it. But no. She does not. Instead, she attempts to prove once and for all that Walter Sickert is Jack the Ripper by testing mitochondrial DNA evidence taken from the “Ripper” letters sent to the police. Only this means nothing, because the “Sickert” DNA samples she compares the “Ripper” samples to are of dubious origin themselves—Sickert, who was cremated, left no definite DNA evidence, and the evidence found on his correspondence could belong to anyone. And even if you could prove he sent one or more Ripper letters, does that necessarily make him Jack the Ripper? Of course not. At the time of the murders, the police and the media were overwhelmed with letters purporting to be from the killer, most—if not all—of which have been long considered to be hoaxes. This is the strongest weapon in her arsenal against Sickert, and it falls apart before it even fires.

I can’t recall having read any of Patricia Cornwell’s crime novels. I don’t know if they’re any better plotted or reasoned than this non-fiction book. But I do know one thing: despite the title of this book, Patricia Cornwell has not come anywhere near to closing this case.