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. T
homas 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).
Without a genealogical study of the Sickert family—which could only be obtained by an exhumation of his mother or one of Sickert’s siblings—we will never be able to say without a doubt what Walter Sickert’s mitochondrial DNA profile was, any more than I can say what Montague Druitt’s, the Duke of Clarence’s, Whistler’s, or Sickert’s wife Ellen’s was because we lack standards for comparison. Suffice it to say that the mitochondrial DNA recovered from Walter Sickert and Jack the Ripper envelopes and stamps could have been left by the same person. The data are at least inclusionary but certainly not conclusive.
Although DNA is a forensic tool that shines brighter than a supernova these days, it is not the only scientific or circumstantial evidence that can convict or exonerate a suspect. That fact seems to be overlooked if not entirely forgotten when contemplating some criminal cases. In the Jack the Ripper murders, the most convincing forensic evidence is not the DNA but the forensic paper comparisons.
The Openshaw (i.e., Ripper) letter that yielded the single-donor mitochondrial DNA results was written on A Pirie & Sons stationery. The letter is postmarked October 29,1888, mailed in London, and reads:ENVELOPE:Dr. Openshaw Pathological curator
London Hospital
White chapel
LETTER:Old boss you was rite it was the left kidny i was goin to
hopperate agin close to your
ospitle just as i was goin
to dror mi nife along of
er bloomin throte them
cusses of coppers spoilt
the game but i guess i wil
be on the job soon and will
send you another bit of
innerds Jack the ripper
O have you seen the devle
with his mikerscope and scalpul
a lookin at a Kidney
with a slide cocked up
One reason I believe this letter is genuine is that it is so blatantly contrived. The bad handwriting looks disguised and is jarringly inconsistent with the handwriting of someone with access to pen and ink and fine-quality watermarked stationery. The address on the envelope is literate, the spelling perfect, which is vastly different from the overblown illiteracy of the letter with its inconsistent misspellings, such as “kidny” and “Kidney,” “wil” and “will.” Stewart P. Evans and Keith Skinner point out in their extremely helpful book Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell that the postscript in the Dr. Openshaw letter alludes to a verse in an 1871 Cornish folktale:Here’s to the devil,
With his wooden pick and shovel,
Digging tin by the bushel,
With his tail cock’d up!
An allusion to a Cornish folktale makes no sense if we are supposed to believe this Openshaw letter was written by an uneducated homicidal maniac who ripped a kidney from a victim and sent it off in the mail. Walter Sickert visited Cornwall as a boy. He painted in Cornwall when he was Whistler’s apprentice. Sickert knew Cornwall and the Cornish people. He was well read and was familiar with folk tunes and music-hall songs. It is unlikely that a poor, uneducated person from London spent time in Cornwall or sat around in the slums reading Cornish folktales.
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.
Although statistically the single-donor sequence excludes 99 percent of the population, in Dr. Ferrara’s words, “The matching sequences might be a coincidence. They might not be a coincidence.” At best, we have a “cautious indicator” that the Sickert and Ripper mitochondrial DNA sequences may have come from the same person.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A PAINTED LETTER
Walter Sickert was a forensic scientist’s worst adversary. He was like a twister tearing through a lab.
He created investigative chaos with his baffling varieties of papers, pens, paints, postmarks, and disguised handwritings, and by his constant moving about without leaving a trail through diaries, calendars, or dates on most of his letters and work. He fooled everyone. But some of what he did would get him into serious trouble today. I believe his letters would be his downfall and get him caught.
A Ripper letter received by the police on October 18, 1889, is on an 11-by-14-inch sheet of azure laid foolscap writing paper, the lettering first drawn in pencil, then beautifully painted over in brilliant red. Apparently no one thought it unusual that a lunatic or an illiterate or even a prankster would elaborately paint a letter that reads:Dear Sir
I shall be in Whitechapel on the 20th of this month—And will begin some very delicate work about midnight, in the street where I executed my third examination of the human body.
Yours till death
Jack the Ripper
Catch Me if you can
[postscript at the top of the page]
PS
I hope you can read what I have written, and will put it all in the paper, not leave half out. If you can not see the letters let me know and I will write them biger.
He misspells bigger as an illiterate would, and I don’t believe the glaring inconsistency in a letter such as this one was an accident. Sickert was playing one of his little games and showing what “fools” the police were. An alert investigator certainly should have questioned why someone would correctly spell delicate and executed and examination and yet misspell the simple word bigger. But details that seem obvious to us now have the benefit of hindsight and the analysis of art experts. The only artist looking at those letters then was the artist who created them,
and many of the Ripper letters are not letters at all, but professional designs and works of art that ought to be framed and hung in a gallery.
Today, as was the case a hundred years ago, science cannot solve crimes without the human element of deductive skills, teamwork, very hard investigation, and smart prosecution. Had we gotten an irrefutable DNA match of a Sickert and a Ripper letter, any sharp defense attorney would say that Sickert’s writing a letter or two or even a dozen doesn’t prove he murdered anyone. Perhaps he simply composed a number of Ripper letters because he had a wacky, warped sense of humor.
A good prosecutor would counter that if Sickert wrote even one of those Ripper letters, he was in trouble, because the letters are confessional. In them, the Ripper claims to have murdered and mutilated people he calls by name, and he threatens to kill government officials and police. Unlike deranged individuals who make false confessions to police, the Ripper’s confessions do not change to reflect the most recent details in the news. Indeed, the Ripper ridicules news accounts when they are wrong, according to him, and in some instances he goes on to correct details, such as the various physical descriptions and supposed social status of the Ripper himself.
If Sickert’s flaunting of his artistic skills in Ripper letters would raise a detective’s eyebrow today, one can be assured that the paper evidence Sickert left would be considered of great importance. In fact, were Sickert a suspect now—assuming the police were well versed in modern forensic science—his paper trail would lead to him.
To date, three Ripper letters and eight Sickert letters have the A Pirie & Sons watermark. It seems that from 1885 to 1887, the Sickerts’ 54 Broadhurst Gardens stationery was A Pirie, and was folded at 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 stationery was torn along the crease and only half of the A Pirie & Sons watermark remains.