Patricia Cornwell - Portrait of a Killer - Jack the Ripper Case

Portrait of a Killer: Jack the RipperΓÇöCase Closed (ISBN 0-425-19273-3) is a 2002 nonfiction book by crime novelist Patricia Cornwell which presents the theory that Walter Sickert, a British painter, was the 19th-century serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.

Jean Overton Fuller, in her 1990 book Sickert and the Ripper Crimes, had maintained that Sickert was Jack the Ripper. Prior to that, Stephen Knight, in his 1976 book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, had maintained that Sickert had been forced to be an accomplice of the Ripper. Neither of these two books is mentioned in Cornwell's book.

Cornwell's book was released to much controversy, especially within the British art world, where Sickert's work is admired, and also among ΓÇ£Ripperologists,ΓÇ¥ who dispute her research methods and conclusions. Cornwell has lashed back at these critics, claiming that, if she were a man or British, her theory would have been accepted. She has also made remarks indicating that those who study the Ripper case would rather have the mystery than its solution.

Cornwell contends Sickert had the psychological profile of a killer. She asserts that many of his paintings and sketches follow a violently misogynistic theme. Cornwell's belief is that Sickert was unable to have intercourse because of botched surgery to correct a fistula on his penis. However Cornwell provides little evidence for either the fistula or the surgery. The killings coincide with the marriage of Sickert's close friend and mentor, the famous painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who later distanced himself from Sickert, even suing Sickert later in life. Cornwell claims this marriage and the end of the friendship provided the spark which exacerbated his awareness of his disabilities and ignited a latent anger against the opposite sex.

Departing from common belief among experts that most of the Ripper's letters were hoaxes,[1] Cornwell writes that the letters contain specific information related to crimes, and as such are unlikely to be from anyone other than the Ripper. However, Cornwell's book does not discuss exactly which details of the Ripper's murders were made known to the general public at the time. Cornwell cites Sickert's artistic genius as useful for crafting the Ripper's letters by disguising handwriting and varying sketching styles. She also points to Sickert's paintings and sketches, some of which show women in prostrate poses that Cornwell claims are similar to victims at their crime scenes.

Cornwell also had a stamp licked by the writer of one of the supposed Ripper letters analysed for DNA, and claimed it pointed to Sickert. However the analysis could only be of Mitochondrial DNA, and, while it can be of use in some cases, the entire human race only shows several dozen mutations. Sickert was at best "not excluded" by the analysis, but his typically European result would be similar to that of several million Britons alive in 1890.

Cornwell has said, including in her Desert Island Discs interview with Sue Lawley, that new evidence has come to light since 2002. She states that a paper manufacture expert she hired asserts that reams of paper supposedly used by Jack the Ripper to write several letters to Scotland Yard and paper purchased by Sickert's mother bear the same small-press watermark. She also claims that there are matches in the cutter's marks, which are a result of the rough cutting of each quire (or small package) for packaging. A "quire" was usually of 24 sheets.