Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper--Case Closed Read Online Free Page A

Sickert used). Since there has never been any evidence to link Druitt to the murders, and since, as I will point out in this book, other murders were committed by the Ripper after Druitt’s suicide in the early winter of 1888, it seems unlikely that the depressed barrister Montague Druitt was Jack the Ripper.
    There is far more convincing physical evidence that points to Sickert. Forensic scientists as well as art, paper, and lettering experts, found the following: a Ripper letter written on artists’ paper; numerous watermarks on paper used in Ripper letters that match watermarks on paper used by Walter Sickert; numerous Ripper letters written with a waxy lithographic crayon; Ripper letters with paint or ink applied with a paintbrush. Microscopic and ultraviolet examinations revealed that swabs of “dried blood” on Ripper letters turn out to be a mixture of white wax, oil, and resin—or etching ground—used by fine-art printmakers to prepare copper etching plates for printing. According to forensic paper expert and paper historian Peter Bower, etching ground was usually mixed in art studios. Sickert began his artistic career as an apprentice to James McNeill Whistler, and, Bower says, “Whistler always used the old-fashioned ground composed of white wax, bitumen pitch, and resin.” But, Bower says, it was not unusual for artists to “develop their own slightly different recipes” that were often based on those used by their teacher.
    As an interesting aside, a blood-detection test conducted on the bloodlike etching ground smeared and painted on Ripper letters came up as inconclusive—which is unusual. At first I thought that the results could have been caused by a chemical reaction to microscopic particles of copper, since in this type of testing, copper can cause inconclusive results or a false positive. However, an examination with a scanning electron microscope equipped with an energy-dispersive X-ray system proved there was no presence of copper or any other inorganic material in the etching ground recovered from Ripper letters and leaves open the possibility that the inconclusive results indicate the presence of blood.
    Art experts say that sketches in Ripper letters are professional and are consistent with Walter Sickert’s art works and technique. Handwriting quirks and the position of the Ripper’s hand when he wrote his taunting, violent letters lurk in other Ripper writings that are disguised. These same quirks and hand positions lurk in Sickert’s erratic handwriting as well.
    Paper used in letters the Ripper sent to the Metropolitan Police precisely matches paper used by Sickert for his own letters—even though the handwriting is different. It is evident that Sickert was right-handed, but video footage taken of him when he was in his seventies shows he was quite adept at using his left hand. Lettering expert Sally Bower believes that in some Ripper letters the writing was disguised by a right-handed person writing with his left hand. It is obvious that the actual Ripper wrote far more of the Ripper letters than he has ever been credited with. In fact, I believe he wrote most of them. In fact, Walter Sickert wrote most of them. Even when his skilled artistic hands altered his writing, his arrogance and characteristic language cannot help but assert themselves.
    No doubt there will always be skeptics, Ripperologists, and Sickert devotees who will refuse to believe that Sickert was Jack the Ripper—a damaged, diabolical man driven by megalomania, hate, and a sexual compulsion to kill and mutilate. There will be those who will argue that all the evidence is coincidence.
    As FBI profiler Ed Sulzbach says, “There really aren’t many coincidences in life. And to call coincidence after coincidence after coincidence a coincidence is just plain stupid.”
    Fifteen months after my first meeting with Scotland Yard’s John Grieve, I returned to him and presented the case.
    “What would you do had you