Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper--Case Closed (61 page)

Pages 44 and 45 of Inspector Abberline’s private clipping book. Abberline headed the Ripper investigation, but never revealed how he worked the cases or how he felt about failing to solve the most notorious crimes of his career.
With kind permission of the Metropolitan Police Service.

Some art experts recognize a professional artistic hand and Sickert’s technique in what may at first glance appear to be crude drawings in these three Ripper letters.
Public Record Office, London.

A
rt and paper experts now believe that what was once assumed to be blood in Ripper letters is actually consistent with etching ground that was finger painted or applied with a paintbrush.
Public Record Office, London.

R
ipper letter written with a paintbrush.
Public Record Office, London.

T
he “Dr. Openshaw” Ripper letter (right) with a watermark that matches the watermark in a “Dear Jimmy” letter Sickert wrote to Whistler (above).
Right, Public Record Office, London; above, Permission of Special Collections Department, Glasgow University Library.

T
he oldest DNA ever tested in a criminal investigation yielded a mitochondrial DNA sequence from the backs of stamps on the Dr. Openshaw letter’s envelope that is a component of mitochondrial DNA sequences found on another Ripper envelope and two Sickert envelopes.
Royal London Hospital Archives.

T
he Ripper’s fingerprints, on a letter mailed to the Metropolitan Police in 1896.
Public Record Office, London.

A Ripper letter on a torn bit of cheap paper, with the note that he can’t afford stationery.
Public Record Office, London.

J
ack the Ripper’s Bedroom,
painted by Sickert in 1908. It is a view of his bedroom in the house where he was living at the time Emily Dimmock was murdered.

E
nnui
by Sickert. Leaning over the left shoulder of the woman in the painting on the wall appears to be the partial face of a man coming up behind her.
© Tate Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY.