Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper--Case Closed (25 page)

Throughout Sickert’s life, his literary prolificacy was astonishing. His clippings book at Islington Public Libraries contains more than 12,000 news items about him and letters he wrote to editors in Great Britain alone, most of them written between 1911 and the late 1930s. He published some four hundred lectures and articles, and I believe these known writings do not represent the entirety of his literary output. Sickert was a compulsive writer who enjoyed persuading, manipulating, and impressing people with his words. He craved an audience. He craved seeing his name in print. It would have been in character for him to have written a startling number of the Ripper letters, including some of those mailed from all over the map.

He may have written far more of them than some document examiners would be inclined to believe, because one makes a mistake to judge Walter Sickert by the usual handwriting-comparison standards. He was a multitalented artist with an amazing memory. He was multilingual. He was a voracious reader and skilled mimic. A number of books on graphology were available at the time, and the handwriting in many Ripper letters is similar to examples of writing styles that Victorian graphologists associated with various occupations and personalities. Sickert could have opened any number of graphology books and imitated the styles he found there. For graphologists to study Ripper letters must have struck Sickert as most amusing.

Using chemicals and highly sensitive instruments to analyze inks, paints, and paper is scientific. Handwriting comparison is not. It is an investigative tool that can be powerful and convincing, especially in detecting forgeries. But if a suspect is adept in disguising his handwriting, comparison can be frustrating or impossible. The police investigating the Ripper cases were so eager to pinpoint similarity in handwriting that they did not explore the possibility that the killer might use many different styles. Other leads, such as cities the Ripper mentioned and postmarks on envelopes, were not pursued. Had they been, it may have been discovered that most of the distant cities shared points in common, including theaters and racecourses. Many of these locations would appear on a map of Sickert’s travels.

Let’s start with Manchester. There were at least three reasons for Sickert to visit that city and be quite familiar with it. His wife’s family, the Cobdens, owned property in Manchester. Sickert’s sister, Helena, lived in Manchester. Sickert had friends as well as professional connections in Manchester. Several Ripper letters mention Manchester. One of them that the Ripper claims to have written from Manchester on November 22, 1888, has a partial A Pirie & Sons watermark. Another letter the Ripper claims to have written from East London, also on November 22nd, has a partial A Pirie & Sons watermark. The stationery Walter and Ellen Sickert began using after they were married on June 10, 1885, has the A Pirie & Sons watermark.

Dr. Paul Ferrara, codirector of the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine, made the first watermark connection when we were examining original Ripper and Sickert letters in London and Glasgow. Transparencies of the letters and their watermarks were submitted to the Institute, and when the Ripper partial watermark and a Sickert complete watermark were scanned into a forensic image-enhancement computer and superimposed on the video screen, they matched identically.

In September 2001, the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine received permission from the British government to conduct nondestructive forensic testing on the original Ripper letters at the Public Record Office in Kew. Dr. Ferrara, DNA analyst Lisa Schiermeier, forensic image-enhancement expert Chuck Pruitt, and others traveled to London, and we examined the Ripper letters. Many of what seemed the most promising envelopes—ones that still had flaps and stamps intact—were moistened and painstakingly peeled back for swabbing. Photographs were taken and handwriting was compared.

From London, we went on to other archival collections and examined paper and took DNA samples from the letters, envelopes, and stamps of Walter Richard Sickert; his first wife, Ellen Cobden Sickert; James McNeill Whistler; and so-called Ripper suspect Montague John Druitt. Some of these tests were exclusionary. Obviously, neither Ellen Sickert nor Whistler has ever been a suspect, but Walter Sickert worked in Whistler’s studio. He mailed letters for him and was in close physical contact with the Master and his belongings. It is possible that Whistler’s DNA—and certainly Ellen’s DNA—could have contaminated Sickert evidence.

We swabbed Whistler envelopes and stamps at the University of Glasgow, where his massive archival collection is kept. We swabbed envelopes and stamps at the West Sussex Record Office, where Ellen Cobden Sickert’s family archives—and, coincidentally, some of Montague John Druitt’s family archives—are kept. The only Druitt sample available to us was the letter he wrote in 1876 while he was a student at Oxford University, and the mitochondrial DNA results from the envelope yielded a single-donor—or clean—profile.

Other documents yet to be tested include two envelopes I have reason to believe were addressed and sealed by the Duke of Clarence (as opposed to having been sealed by a secretary, for example). I do not believe that Druitt or any of these so-called suspects had a thing to do with murder and mutilation, and if given the opportunity, I would like to clear their names if I can. DNA testing will continue until all practical means are exhausted. The importance extends far beyond the Ripper investigation.

There is no one left to indict and convict. Jack the Ripper and all who knew him well have been dead for decades. But there is no statute of limitations on homicide, and the Ripper’s victims deserve justice. And whatever we can learn that furthers our knowledge of forensic science and medicine is worth the trouble and expense. I was not optimistic we would get a DNA match, but I was surprised and quite crestfallen when the first round of testing turned up not a single sign of human life in all fifty-five samples. I decided to try again, this time swabbing different areas of the same envelopes and stamps.

Still, we came up with nothing. There are a number of possible explanations for these disappointing results: The one-billionth of a gram of cells in human saliva that would have been deposited on a stamp or envelope flap did not survive the years; heat used to laminate the Ripper letters for conservation destroyed the nuclear DNA; suboptimal storage for a hundred years caused degradation and destruction of the DNA; or perhaps the adhesives were the culprit.

The “glutinous wash,” as adhesives were called in the mid-nineteenth century, was derived from plant extracts, such as the bark of the acacia tree. During the Victorian era, the postal system underwent an industrial revolution, with the first Penny Black stamp mailed on May 2, 1840, from Bath. The envelope-folding machine was patented in 1845. Many people did not want to lick envelopes or stamps for “sanitary” reasons, and used a sponge. To add to the scientific odds against us when we swabbed envelopes and stamps, we could not possibly know who had licked their envelopes and who had not. The last genetic option left for us was to try a third round of testing, this time for mitochondrial DNA.

When one reads about DNA tests used in modern criminal or paternity cases, what is usually being referred to is the nuclear DNA that is located in virtually every cell in the body and passed down from both parents. Mitochondrial DNA is found outside the nucleus of the cell. Think of an egg: The nuclear DNA is found in the yolk, so to speak, and the mitochondrial DNA would be found in the egg white. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down only from the mother. While the mitochondrial region of a cell contains thousands more “copies” of DNA than the nucleus does, mitochondrial DNA testing is very complex and expensive, and the results can be limited because the DNA is passed down from only one parent.

The extracts of all DNA samples were sent to The Bode Technology Group, an internationally respected private DNA laboratory, best known for assisting the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in using mitochondrial DNA to determine the identity of America’s Vietnam War Unknown Soldier. More recently, Bode has been using mitochondrial DNA to identify victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Unlike tooth and bone, the backs of envelopes and stamps are very difficult surfaces to test for mitochondrial DNA because one can’t scrub away surface contaminants from paper and adhesives. Surface contaminants can “mask the original donor,” says Bode’s Mitch Holland, and certainly this was the challenge facing all of us in the testing of some one hundred samples from the Jack the Ripper case.

While traveling back and forth to England during the early months of this investigation, I anxiously waited for the report from Bode. When I finally got it, I was in London’s Public Record Office with art and paper experts. Dr. Paul Ferrara reached me and said that Bode had finished the testing of the first fifty-seven samples (three of them from those of us present during the swabbing, including me, for exclusionary purposes). We had gotten mitochondrial DNA on almost every sample, but the results were both frustrating and curious.

The majority of the genetic profiles are a mishmash of individuals and probably useless. But seven samples have the same mitochondrial DNA sequence profile components found on the Openshaw envelope. Before I explain our findings, I must state that the mixture, poor quality of samples, and lack of references from the individuals in question (such as Walter Sickert’s known DNA) weaken these data and make them “questionable,” as Mitch Holland explains in his report. However, the results are certainly worth mentioning because they also do not exclude Sickert as having been Jack the Ripper, or at least from having sent Ripper letters to the police and press.

Genetic “markers” are locations—much as one might think of locations on a map, with some locations more distinctive and unusual than others. Markers in the Ripper /Sickert tests are where the base positions of DNA are located on the D loop sequence of the mitochondrial DNA. Clearly, an imposing challenge for DNA experts is to help the nonscientific community understand what DNA is and what test results mean. Enlarged court display posters showing matching fingerprints create a flurry of nods and “oh yes, I get it” looks from jurors. But the analysis of human blood—beyond its screaming fresh red or its old dark dried presence on clothing and weapons and at crime scenes—has always induced catatonia and pinpoint pupils in panicky eyes.

In the old days, ABO blood-group typing was antenna-tangling enough. DNA blows mental transformers, and the hackneyed explanation that a DNA “fingerprint” or profile looks like a bar code on a soup can in the grocery store isn’t helpful in the least. I can’t envision my flesh and bones as billions of bar codes that can be scanned in a laboratory and come up as me. So I often use analogies, and again, I think a good one is a map drawn in pastels (that smear). If one imagines looking at our map and finding only three features (the Mall, the White House, and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History), then we know that three features constitute a profile (or sequence) that is single-donor—or comes from the same city. To continue the analogy, if other pastel-drawn maps with other features from other cities are stacked on top of our map, and chalky imprints of these other city features are imprinted or smeared onto our map, then what had been single-donor becomes a mixture.

The swabbed samples in the Jack the Ripper case yielded only three results from three different people that are single-donor; they are not a mixture (or “mishmash,” as I call it) and each has a sequence of numbers (markers) that came from only one person. Unfortunately, the rest of the samples tested so far may have these same markers, but are mixtures from different people. This doesn’t mean the markers weren’t left by the same individuals who left single-donor sequences, but complex remixtures to interpret.

The three single-donor samples are from letters written by James McNeill Whistler, Montague John Druitt, and a letter signed “Jack the Ripper.” The Ripper single-donor profile came from a partial postage stamp on the back of a letter he wrote to Dr. Thomas Openshaw, the curator of the London Hospital Museum. The single-donor sequence recovered from the Whistler letter is 16311 T-C 93 A-G; the sequence recovered from the Druitt letter is 16223 C-T 16278 C-T 73 A-G 263 A-G; and the sequence recovered from the Openshaw letter is 16294 C-T 73 A-G 263 A-G. (Additional mitochondrial data can be found in the appendix.)

The three components (markers) of the Openshaw sequence are found in five other samples which are not single-donor, as far as we can tell at this point, and show a mixture of other base positions or “locations” in the mitochondrial region. This could mean that the sample was contaminated by the DNA of other people. As I will continue to emphasize, a drawback in our testing is that the ever-elusive Walter Sickert has yet to offer us his DNA profile. When he was cremated, our best evidence went up in flames. Unless we eventually find a premortem sample of his blood, skin, hair, teeth, or bones, we will never resurrect Walter Richard Sickert in a laboratory. But we may have found pieces of him.

The clean single-donor sequence recovered from the partial stamp on the back of the Openshaw envelope is our best basis of comparison. Its sequence (16294 C-T 73 A-G 263 A-G) is the markers or the locations of DNA base positions in the mitochondrial region.

So far, seven samples have these same single-donor Openshaw (i.e., Ripper) components of the sequence: the front stamp from the Openshaw (i.e., Ripper) envelope; three other Ripper envelopes; a Walter Sickert envelope flap; a stamp from a Walter Sickert envelope; and an envelope from a letter written by Sickert’s first wife, Ellen. And so far, six samples have mixtures of the Openshaw (i.e., Ripper) components of the sequence: two envelopes from Sickert letters; two envelopes from Ripper letters; and two envelopes from Ellen Sickert.

The Ellen Sickert results are interesting. They may mean nothing, but supposing that the components do mean something and are from Sickert, this could be explained if Ellen moistened the envelope and stamp with the same sponge her husband, Walter, used. Or Sickert might have touched or licked the adhesive on the flap or stamp, perhaps because he mailed the letter for her. Or, saying that that profile on the Openshaw letter is Sickert’s profile, there is always the possibility (albeit remote) that his first wife (Ellen) had the same mitochondrial DNA sequence as he did. We did not get a single-donor profile on any Ellen Sickert samples (envelopes).