Portrait of a Killer by Patricia Cornwell

In addition he is believed to have had several mistresses and is thought to have fathered at least one illegitimate child.

Indeed, his first wife had divorced him citing his adultery in her petition for divorce. It was also pointed out that the evidence suggests that Sickert was anything but impotent. This impotency had scarred him emotionally and had left him with a pathological hatred of women which, in time, led him to carry out a series of murders in the East End of London which became known as the Jack the Ripper murders.ĭoubts were raised about her theory when it was pointed out that St Mark's Hospital, where the operations on the young Sickert were supposedly performed, specialised in rectal as opposed to genital fistulas. When her book was published it caused a worldwide sensation and the spotlight was turned on both Cornwall herself and on her suspect.'I do believe 100%,' she told a US chat show, 'that Walter Richard Sickert committed those serial crimes' IMPOTENCY AND PATHOLOGICAL HATREDĪccording to Cornwell's theory Walter Sickert had been made impotent by a series of painful childhood operations for a fistula of the penis. She set out to do something that few, if any, other Ripperologists had been either able, or inclined to do, namely, apply modern forensic techniques to the Jack the Ripper case and, in so doing, solve, once and for all, the world's greatest murder mystery.

MODERN FORENSIC TECHNIQUESĪs a successful, and wealthy, novelist, Cornwell was not restricted by the constraints of budget when she set out to hunt down history's most notorious serial killer. The name of Walter Sickert has been linked to the Jack the Ripper murders by several authors and, over the years, his role in the killings has been said to have varied enormously.Īccording to some authors he was an accomplice in the Whitechapel Murders, whilst others have depicted him as knowing who was responsible for the crimes and duly informing on them.īut, according to the crime novelist Patricia Cornwell in her 2002 book Portrait of a Killer - Jack the Ripper Case Closed Sickert was in fact the man who carried our the crimes that became known as the Jack the Ripper Murders.

Walter Sickert JACK THE RIPPER - CASE CLOSED PATRICIA CORNWELL WADES IN

Portrait of a Killer by Patricia Cornwell