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

Rating:
Summary: The first instinct is usually the best
Review: As Ms. Cornwell herself admitted in the opening pages, she was hesitant to finish this work - she should have acted on that impulse.

In brief, this is almost certainly among the least impressive on what has become a cottage industry: books claiming to "solve" the Jack the Ripper Case. Ms. Cornwell does take a novel approach (sort of) in that she first identifies a suspect and then starts building an extraordinarily weak circumstantial case against him. Hardly the way we normally do things in proper law enforcement (or in forensic investigations, for that matter). Though she does not acknowledge this in the text, the idea of Walter Sichert as a suspect was not even original - that tenuous argument was advanced in a 1990 book by Jean Fuller.

While Ms. Cornwell has worked professionally as a computer programmer in a medical examiner's office and no doubt added to her knowledge of forensics since, her approach - largely consisting of her subjective analysis of Sichert's drawings and paintings with less-than-keen insight, and with some unproven and overly-generalized psychological theory thrown into the mix - ultimately fails on both an investigative and literary level. With the "evidence" she has revealed, no sane prosecutor would even begin to consider filing an indictment based on such a patently silly collection of "proof."

As regards the supposedly ground-breaking DNA results, they demonstrate that Walter Sichert just MIGHT have, maybe, licked a stamp on letters which she quickly concludes are from the actual killer - again, it would be more effective to conclude that Queen Victoria was the Ripper than to proceed on the premise that Ms. Cornwell has finally "solved" this intriguing murder mystery.

Not hardly.

Rating:
Summary: Well written but the case seems fradulent rather than closed
Review: This book is well written but the evidence Cornwell presents is definitely not convincing. She seems to proceed with the definite premise that Sicket was the murderer. She then goes on to reject evidence that does not fit this hypothesis and also make a large number of unsubstantiated claims. Take an example. She notes that Ripper letters were posted from several places including France and America. Then she goes on to say, that they must have been hoaxes, because Sickert never visited America!

I definitely got the impression that Cornwell was trying to awe people into accepting her evidence by throwing around some jargon[though the book is readable]. This is the oldest trick in the book and does not stand up to scrutiny.

Finally, a comment about her generalizations. Cornwell seems fond of making universal generalizations -- about the nature of pscopathic killers for example. She suggests that their 'frontal lobe' is damaged! Leaving aside the question of when someone becomes a psycopathic killer(is Kissinger one? Is Bush one?), the statistics she quotes seem to be untenable. Take an example: Cornwell says that 4% of the population at large and 25% of the prison population have the trait that marks a person as a psycopathic killer[abnormal frontal lobe]. This is completely untenable because it suggests that a large section of the prison population is in prison because of genetic characteristics rather than socioeconomic factors. This thesis has been falsified. A quick calculation-- that I leave to the reader--will show the fallacy of Cornwell's statistic.

Rating:
Summary: Repeation of assertions does not a conclusive proof make..
Review: Patricia Cornwall is a good writer of fictional detective thrillers, these I adore, but perhaps she should stick to her imaginary plots. This book started out well, but got bogged down with unnecessary and often irrelevant tangents and repetition.

I suspect Patricia felt insecure about venturing off into a factual arguement about an actual case, so she anxiously tried to convince the reader by lengthy restatement of the same assertions. The book contains 365 pages of text, but could have been edited back to around 200 pages. A reader is capable of accepting that many modern methods of forensic analysis were not available when the 'Ripper cases' occured in the late 1880s, without needing to be told in triplicate that if a certain type of analysis had been available (i.e. DNA or fingerprinting etc.) then successful detection of the ripper's identity could have occured.

Let's face it Patricia, given the forensic limitations of the genre conclusive evidence was not (and never will be) available. The book makes a plausable, compelling case for Cornwall's Ripper candidate Walter Sickert, utilizing various recovered data (saliva, fingerprints etc.) reassessed using modern scientific forensic techniques. Patricia deserves high praise for pursuing all available sources and uncovering this evidence, but we will never have conclusive, irrefutable proof as the actual perpetratior is deceased.

If Patricia just accepted the fact that all she can achieve is a conpelling suspect and leave it at that then the book could have been wrapped up at least 100 pages earlier. Some truths can never be known (given the circumstances) and bemoaning the 'if only' and 'what ifs' for multiple pages will not change that. I propose she reworks the offering and publishes a revised edition, I do think it was worth writing.

I was convinced about half way through the book, the second half was unnecesary straining even my perservance to finish. My conclusion is that Cornwall needs a more ruthless and autocratic editor. Had bemoaning the limitations of the available hard data been omitted this would have been a good, albeit much shorter, book.

Rating:
Summary: Teeeee-dious
Review: Let me start by saying I was a big Cornwell fan for a couple of her books, but decided her fiction was a little dark and her protagonist self-righteous and unsympathetic. I've continued to read her books hoping that she'll temper her holier-than-thou narrative style. Thus the purchase of this book.

"She doesn't fail to disappoint" comes to mind.

Her narrative here is disjointed, she has no definitive conclusions and page after page of speculation. There were times I had to check the page numbers to make sure I hadn't skipped a page. Could she be absolutely correct in her assumptions? You betcha. Does she "close the case"? You decide -- but don't buy this book, just borrow one from someone who's pitching it.

Rating:
Summary: Not conclusive but what could be at this stage?
Review: There's been so much speculation about Kennedy's assassination that, despite compelling and strong evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald (In Case Closed) did it alone, the subject has taken on a literary and profitable life of its own. The same could be true for Jack the Ripper. More time has passed and, as a result, the evidence continues to become more and more distant from the present. I was dubious about the conclusions of Patricia Cornwell's book--how could a one mystery writer tackle and solve such a difficult case?

While much of the evidence is circumstanial (outside of the DNA evidence), Cornwell convinced me that she may have solved some of the Ripper murders. I'm not someone that has had a fascination with these type of things, but her observations (both physical and psychological), evidence and conclusions are pretty daunting. Walter Sickert was a well known artist of the time. He demonstrated qualities similar to what is suspected about Jack the Ripper and had a physical infirmery that could have led him down the path of murder and mutilation. Cornwell looks at Sickert's background, art, his writing, where he lived and many other elements and comes to the conclusion that he was, indeed, saucy Jack.

Is it possible? Very. One point, though, is that copycat mutiliations, murders and letter writing (along with time) has obscured much of the evidence. It's possible that there was more than one murderer. It's also possible that Sickert may have written some of the letters attributed to Jack without actually being Jack. There's no way to know for certain. Regardless, Cornwell makes a strong case for Sickert as Jack. The type of concrete evidence we're accustomed to in our day and age wasn't available then and there.

There's also been so much misinformation over time that it's getting very sticky to separate fact from fiction so 100% certainty may continue to elude us as to what face the Ripper wore. Either way, Cornwell's well researched book is thought provoking. You may disagree with her conclusions but until you're able to come up with first hand evidence and observations about the case, it'll be mere idle speculation. Her speculation isn't idle--it's on target most of the time.

Rating:
Summary: From Hell...
Review: I loved this book. As someone with an avid interest in the "Jack the Ripper" cases, I have seen and read many things on the topic and I am thouroughly convinced of Sickert's guilt. This was the first book I have read of Cornwell's and I thought it was great. The amount of information included - though graphic and sickening, was unbelievable. Cheers! Great read.

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.