CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE:

Walter Sickert was a master of disguise, so skilled at it even as a child that at times his own mother did not recognize him. He began his career as an actor around 1879, his forte make-up. A very plausible explanation for why Jack the Ripper so easily eluded police and potential witnesses is that he wore make-up and disguises.

Sickert's favorite haunt was the slums of the East End, where the infamous Ripper murders occurred in the summer, fall and early winter of 1888. Sickert was known to have secret studios or "rat holes"-as many as three or four at a time, which would have facilitated his cleaning up after his crimes, storing his bloody clothing, changing clothing and keeping souvenirs, such as body parts, without being detected.

Sickert was known to disappear for days and weeks at a time. His own wives (he was married 3 times) often did not know where he was or when he might return.

Sickert's models for his painting were "people of the dustbin," as women prostitutes of the time were called. The Ripper's victims were also prostitutes, although there is a good possibility he may also have murdered at least one child.

Sickert's grandmother was an Irish dance hall "immoral woman," and her daughter-his mother-was illegitimate. His favorite form of entertainment and a well-known subject of his paintings were music halls, which were frequented by prostitutes.

Jack the Ripper made it clear in his many letters to the police and press that he hated prostitutes and was ridding the world of them. Sickert had good reason to hate prostitutes, as well. In the Victorian period it was an accepted belief that if a woman was immoral or a prostitute, she suffered from a genetic defect which could be passed down the bloodline.

Sickert was born with a genetic defect that in many ways destroyed his life. He had a deformity of his penis that required three surgeries by the time he was five years old. It is unlikely he would have been capable of sexual intercourse. There is no evidence that he ever had children. Jack the Ripper left no evidence of sexual assault. Seminal fluid was not found in any case that has been attributed to him, nor was it found in multiple other murders that were not attributed to him but that he very likely committed.

Sickert painted pictures of clothed male murderers and their nude female victims.

Doodles, sketches and cartoons in Ripper letters are consistent with Sickert's own doodles and highly skilled technique. As Sickert expert and art historian Dr. Anna Greutzner Robins says, "It's not possible to study Walter Sickert extensively and not begin to suspect that he was the Ripper."

PHYSICAL EVIDENCE:

DNA forensic scientists swabbed envelopes and stamps from Ripper and Sickert letters. It is the oldest DNA evidence ever analyzed in a criminal case. A single-donor mitrochondrial DNA sequence recovered from a stamp on a Ripper letter was identical to one found on at least four other samples including: another stamp from that same envelope; another Ripper envelope that also tested positive for blood; a stamp from a Sickert envelope; and an envelope flap from a Sickert letter. Due to a mixture of DNA from other people that is found in all but the single-donor sample, it cannot be said conclusively that the DNA sequence proves that the same person touched or licked the Ripper and Sickert envelope flaps and stamps. However, statistically, that particular DNA sequence eliminates 99% of the population as having been the donor.

(It should be noted that forensic evidence including 50 additional DNA samples is still in the process of being tested, and that other evidence collection and examination could go on for years.)

Ripper letters include a mixture of artistic mediums that were never noticed prior to this investigation, including: water-based paints, letters written with sketching pens, crayons, and etching ground (microscopically identified as a mixture of white wax, resin and oil). Etching ground was used on copper printing plates-or to make etchings. Sickert was an accomplished etcher by the time of the Ripper murders. Etching ground was mixed in a studio and could not be purchased "over the counter." Each etcher had his own recipe for etching ground that he learned as an apprentice, from his Master. Sickert was the apprentice of James McNeill Whistler, whose recipe for etching ground was very similar to Sickert's. Tests show conclusively that some Ripper letters were written with etching ground and that the composition of the Ripper's etching ground was very similar to the etching ground mixed by Whistler-the same man who taught Sickert to etch.

More than ten percent of the 211 Ripper letters in the Public Record Office in Kew were written on watermarked paper. At least four different types of watermarks match watermarks in the stationery Sickert and his wife used at the time of the murders.

A Ripper telegram was signed "Mr. Nobody," which was then crossed out and signed, "Jack the Ripper." Five letters written to the City of London police were signed "Nemo," and a letter to the editor of the Times (about the Ripper cases) was also signed "Nemo." Sickert's stage name when he was an actor was "Mr. Nemo," or "Mr. Nobody." Throughout his life he was a compulsive letter writer and frequently wrote letters to the editors of various newspapers.

The most respected investigator for Scotland Yard, John Grieve, has started that based on this evidence alone, he would have arrested Walter Sickert and presented the case to the Crown's prosecutor.

Excerpts about the evidence gathered in the investigation of Portrait of a Killer Jack the Ripper - Case Closed

1. A mitochondrial DNA sequence taken from the Ripper's notorious "Dr. Openshaw" letter matches one found on several Sickert items "The clean single-donor [mitochondrial DNA] sequence recovered from the partial stamp on the back of the Openshaw envelope is our best basis of comparison. Its sequence is the three markers 16294-73-263, or the locations of DNA base positions in the mitochondrial regions-rather much as A7, G10, D12, and so on indicate places on a map. The five samples that have this same 16294-73-263 single-donor Openshaw sequence are the front stamp from the Openshaw envelope; an Ellen Sickert envelope; an envelope from a Walter Sickert letter; a stamp from a Walter Sickert envelope; and a Ripper envelope with a stain that tests positive for blood, but which may be too degraded to determine if it is human" (14/171)

"One could argue-and should-that the absence of a reliable known reference source, in this instance, Walter Sickert's DNA, suggests we are assuming without conclusive scientific evidence that the single-donor sequence from the Openshaw letter was deposited by Walter Sickert, alias Jack the Ripper. We can't assume any such thing."

In Dr. Ferrara's words, "The matching sequences might be a coincidence. They might not be a coincidence.' At best, we have a Ôcautious indicator' that the Sickert and Ripper mitochondrial DNA sequences may have come from the same person." (14/174)

2. Renowned forensic paper examiner Peter Bower on the "Watermarks and language aside, the problem of handwriting remains. The amazing variety found in the Ripper letters has been a source of hot debate. Many people, including forensic documents examiners, have argued that it is not possible for one person to write in so many hands." (15/181)

This is not necessarily true, says paper historian and forensic paper analyst Peter Bower, one of the most respected paper experts in the world, and perhaps best known for his work on the papers used by the artists as varied as Michelangelo, J.M.W. Turner, Constable, and others-as well as for determining that the notorious Jack the Ripper diary was a fraud. Bower has assisted in our examination of the Ripper/Sickert letters. He says he has seen Ôgood calligraphers' that can write in an incredible number of different hands, but Ôit takes extraordinary skill.' His wife Sally Bower, is a much-respected letterer, or person who designs and draws lettering. Although she is not a handwriting expert, she has a different perspective because she is an expert in how a person forms the letters strung together in words. When she looked through Ripper letters with her husband, she immediately connected a number of letters through quirks and how the hand made the writing. I have no doubt that Sickert had an amazing ability to write in many different hands, but his disguises are becoming less concealing as the investigation progresses." (15/181)

"Two Ripper letters written to the Metropolitan Police and one Ripper letter written to the City of London Police are on matching very cheap pale blue paper-and for three letters to come from the same batch of paper strongly indicates that the same person wrote them, just as matching watermarks, especially three different types of matching watermarks, are hard to dismiss as coincidence." (15/183)

3. Watermarks on Ripper letters match those found on stationary used by Sickert

"The watermarks add yet another layer. To date, three Ripper letters and eight Sickert letters have the A Pirie & Sons watermark. It seems that from 1885 to 1887, the Sickerts' 543 Broadhurst Gardens stationary was A Pirie, and was folded in the middle like a greeting card. The front of the fold was bordered in pale blue, the embossed address also pale blue. The A Pirie & Sons watermark is centered on the crease. In the three Ripper letters, the stationary was torn along the crease and only half of the A Pirie & Sons watermark remains." (15/176)

"Forensic scientists as well art, paper, and lettering experts found the following: a Ripper letter written on artists' paper; watermarks and paper used in Ripper letters that match watermarks on paper used by Walter Sickert; Ripper letters written with the waxy-soft crayonlike ground used in lithography; Ripper letters with paint or ink applied with a paintbrush... 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." (2/13-14)

4. Numerous links exist between the infamous Ripper letters and Sickert

"One of the most distinctive features of the Ripper letters is that so many of them were written with drawing pens and daubed or smeared with bright inks and paints. They show the skilled hand of a highly trained or professional artist. More than a dozen of these letters include phallic drawings of knives-all long, daggerlike instruments-except for two strange, short, truncated blades in brazenly taunting letters." (3/65-66)

"Alleged Ripper letters not only drops hints....but also reveal an emerging geographical profile. Many of the locations mentioned-some of them repeatedly-are places and areas that were well known to Walter Sickert: the Bedford Music Hall in Camden Town, which he painted many times; his home at 54 Broadhurst Gardens; and theatrical, artistic, and commercial parts of town that Sickert would have frequented." (14/162)

"What had always been assumed to be human or animal blood on the Ripper letters turns out to be sticky brown etching ground-or perhaps a mixture that remarkably resembles old blood. These bloody smears, drips, and splotches were applied with an artist's brush, or are imprints left by fabrics or fingers. Some of the Ripper's stationary is "vellum" or other paper with watermarks. Apparently the police never noticed the feathering brush strokes or types of paper when investigating the Ripper murders. Apparently no one has ever paid any attention to the some thirty different watermarks found on letters thought to be hoaxes written by some illiterate or deranged prankster. Apparently no one has asked whether such a prankster was likely to have possessed drawing pens, colorful inks, lithographic or Chinagraph crayons, etching ground, and artist's paints and paper." (7/81)

5: A Ripper telegram was signed "Mr. Nobody," which was then crossed out and signed "Jack the Ripper." It was not the first time the Ripper would use "Mr. Nobody" ("Mr. Nemo")

"Four letters catalogued in ÔThe Whitechapel Murders' files at the Corporation of London Record Office were written on Joynson Superfine paper: October 8, 1888; October 16, 1888; January 29, 1889; and February 16, 1889. Two of these letters are signed ÔNemo.' Three other letters with no watermarks are also signed ÔNemo.' On October, 1888 (four days before the first ÔNemo' letter was written to the City of London police), The Times published a letter to the editor that was signed ÔNemo.' In it the writer described Ômutilations, cutting off the nose and ears, ripping up the body, and cutting out certain organs-the heart, & c.__..."' (15/178-179)

Dr. Paul Ferrara, director 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. " (14/167-168)

6. From an early age Sickert's fascination with violence and morbid images pervades his art

"The most violent amateurish drawing in this collection depicts a bosomy woman in a low-cut dress sitting in a chair, her hands bound behind her, her head thrown back as a right-handed man plunges a knife into the center of her chest at the level of her sternum. She has additional wounds on the left side of her chest, a wound on the left side of her neck-where the carotid artery would be-and possibly a wound below her left eye. Her killer's only facial feature is a slight smile, and he is dressed in a suit. Opposite this sketch, on the same scrap of rectangular paper, there is a crouching, frightening-looking man who is about to spring on a woman dressed in a long skirt, shawl, and bonnet." (5/50)

"Many of the nudes and other female subjects have bare necks with black lines around them, as if to suggest a cut throat or decapitation. Some dark areas around a figure's throat are intended to be shadows and shading, but the dark, solid, black lines I refer to are puzzling. They are not jewelry, so if Sickert drew and painted what he saw, what are these lines?" (11/122)

"Most recently an uncatalogued Sickert sketch was discovered that seems to be a flashback to his music hall days in 1888. Sickert made the sketch in 1920, and it depicts a bearded male figure talking to a prostitute. The man's back is partially to us, but we get the impression that his penis is exposed and that he is holding a knife in his right hand. At the bottom of the sketch is what appears to be a disemboweled woman whose arms have been dismembered-as if Sickert is showing the before and after of one of his kills." (11/123-124)

7. The possibility of a Ripper who wore disguises would help explain why he seemed to vanish without a trace after his crimes, as well as the variety of descriptions witnesses gave of the men supposedly last seen with the victims. Sickert was a master of disguise.

"He had great range of voice and was a master of greasepaint and wardrobe. So gifted at disguise was he that as a boy he often went about unrecognized by his neighbors and family.

Throughout his long and celebrated life, he was notorious for constantly changing his appearance with a variety of beards and mustaches, for his bizarre dress that in some cases constituted costumes, for his hairstyle-including shaving his head. He was, wrote French artist and friend Jacques-Emile Blanche, a ÔProteus.' Sickert's Ôgenius for camouflage in dress, in the fashion of wearing his hair, and in his manner of speaking rival Fregoli's,' Blanche recalled." (1/4)

"When the police were looking for Jack the Ripper, a great deal of importance was placed on witness descriptions of men last seen with the victims. Investigative reports reveal that much attention was paid to hair color, complexion, and height, with the police not taking into account that all of these characteristics can be disguised. Height not only varies in an individual depending on posture, hats, and footwear, but can be altered by Ôtrickery.' Actors can wear tall hats and special lifts in their shoes. They can stoop and slightly bend the knees under voluminous coats or capes; they can wear caps low over their eyes, making themselves appear to be inches taller or shorter than they are." (12/135)

8. Evidence suggests some of the Ripper's victims were killed elsewhere and then dumped. Sickert was known to maintain a number of secret rented hovels that he called studios. These would have facilitated his cleaning up after his crimes, storing his bloody clothing, changing clothing and keeping souvenirs, such as body parts, without being detected

"Sickert wasn't interested in people knowing where he was. He was notorious for his lifelong habit of renting at least three secret Ôstudios' at a time. These hovels were scattered about in locations so private and so unexpected and so unpredictable that his wife, colleagues, and friends had no idea where they were. His known studios, which numbered close to twenty during his life, were often slovenly Ôsmall rooms' filled with chaos that Ôinspired' him. Sickert worked alone behind locked doors. It was rare that he would see anyone and if he did, a visit to these rat holes required a telegram or a special knock. In his older years, he erected tall black gates in front of his door and chained a guard dog to one of the iron bars. (7/84)

"Sickert's private working life Ôtook him to queer places where he improvised studios and workshops,' art dealer Lillian Browse wrote a year after his death. As early as 1888, when he was frequenting the music halls, he obsessively rented secret rooms he could not afford." (17/208)

9. Sickert's favorite haunts were the slums of the East End slums where the infamous Ripper murders occurred. He was known for frequently disappearing with no explanation

"As is true of any good actor, Sickert knew how to make an entrance and an exit. He had a habit of vanishing for days or weeks without telling Ellen or his second and third wives or his acquaintances where he was or why. He might invite friends to dinner and not show up. He would reappear as he pleased, usually no explanation offered. Outings often turned into his missing in action, for he liked to go to the theater and music halls alone and afterward wander during the late night and misty early morning." (7/84-85)

10. Although there's a good possibility he may have murdered at least one child, the Ripper's victims were "unfortunates," as women prostitutes of the time were called. Sickert used prostitutes and other "people of the dustbin" as models.

His best-known artistic leitmotif is an iron bedstead, and on it is a nude prostitute with a man aggressively leaning over her. Sometimes both the man and the nude woman are sitting, but the man is always clothed. It was Sickert's habit to keep an iron bedstead in any studio he was using at the time, and on it he arranged many a model." (7/80)

"Walter Sickert preferred female studio models obese or emaciated, and the lower their social class and the uglier they were, the better." (4/33)

"...in a letter he wrote to his American friends Ethel Sands and Ann Hudson, he voiced delight over his latest models and how Ôthrilled' he was by the Ôsumptuous poverty of their class.'" (4/34)

11. Sickert's favorite form of entertainment, and a well known subject of his paintings, was music halls, which were often frequented by prostitutes

"Gatti's Hungerford Palace of Varieties was one of the most vulgar music halls in London. It was Sickert's favorite haunt the first eight months of 1888, and he went there several nights a week. ... While other men leered and egged on the half-naked performers, Sickert sketched dismembered female body parts." (17/205-206)

"Cleavage and exposed thighs were scandalous, but nobody seemed to worry much about the exploitation of the female child stars prancing about singing the same racy songs as the adults. Girls as young as eight years old dressed in costumes and little frocks and aped sexual awareness that invited pedophilic excitement and became the material for a number of Sickert's paintings." (17/205-206)

12. Women were a dangerous reminder of Sickert's infuriating and humiliating secret

"Sickert was born with a deformity of his penis requiring surgeries when he was a toddler that would have left him disfigured if not mutilated. He probably was incapable of an erection. He may not have had enough of a penis left for penetration, and it is quite possible he had to squat like a woman to urinate." (1/5)

"An exact diagnosis of Sickert's congenital deformity and any other health problems associated with it may always remain nebulous, although in 1899, he refers to his Ôorgans of generation,' having suffered all his life," and to his ÔPhysical misery.'" (6/68)

"...if it is true-as it seems to have been in all of the alleged Ripper murders-that there was no indication of Ôconnection,' as the Victorians called intercourse, then this is a pattern that should have been treated very seriously, but wasn't." ...The lack of seminal fluid in the Ripper lust-murders is consistent with the supposition that Sickert was incapable of sex." (4/38-39)

13. Sickert's grandmother was an Irish dance hall "immoral woman" and her daughter-his mother-was illegitimate.

"In the nineteenth century, to be born illegitimate or to be the child of an illegitimate parent was a terrible stigma. When Sickert's maternal grandmother had sex out of wedlock, according to Victorian standards, she enjoyed it, which implied that she suffered from the same genetic disorder that prostitutes did. The common belief was that this congenital defect was passed down the bloodline and was a Ôcontagious blood poison' ...Sickert might have blamed his boyhood agonies, his humiliations, and his maimed masculinity on a genetic defect or Ôblood poison' that he inherited from his immoral dance-hall grandmother and his illegitimate mother." (6/72-73)

"Art historian and Sickert scholar Dr. Anna Guertzner Robins of the University of Reading says that she does not see how it is possible for one to study Sickert extensively and not begin to suspect that he was Jack the Ripper." (6/60)

14. One particularly noteworthy Ripper letter bears the initials R. St. w. after the postscript