Patricia Cornwell - Portrait Of A Killer - Jack The Ripper - Case Closed

Five hours after Annie Chapman's body was carried inside the Whitechapel mortuary, Dr. George Phillips arrived and found she had been stripped and washed. Furious, he demanded an explanation.

Robert Mann, the mortuary supervisor who had caused so much trouble in Mary Ann Nichols's case, replied that workhouse authorities had instructed two nurses to undress and clean the body. No police or doctors had witnessed this, and as the angry Dr. Phillips looked around the mortuary, he noticed Annie's clothing piled on the floor in a corner. His earlier admonition that the body was not to be touched by inmates, nurses, or anyone else unless the police instructed otherwise had had little effect on Mann. The inmate had heard all this before.

The mortuary was nothing more than a cramped, filthy, stinking shed with a scarred wooden table darkened by old blood. In the summer it was stuffy and warm, and in the winter it was so cold Mann could barely bend his fingers. What a job his was, Mann must have thought, and maybe the doctor should have been grateful that two nurses had saved him some trouble. Besides, it didn't take a doctor to see what had killed the poor woman. Her head was barely attached to her neck and she had been gutted like a hog hanging in a butcher's shop. Mann didn't pay much attention as Dr. Phillips continued to vent his disgust, complaining that his working conditions were not only unsuitable but also dangerous to his health.

The doctor's point would be made more fully during the inquest. Coroner Wynne Baxter announced to jurors and the press that it was a travesty that there was no proper mortuary in the East End. If any place in the Great Metropolis needed an adequate facility for handling the dead, it was certainly the impoverished East End, where in nearby Wapping, bodies recovered from the Thames had "to be put in boxes" for lack of anywhere else to take them, said Baxter.

There had once been a mortuary in Whitechapel, but it had been destroyed when a new road was put in. For one reason or another, London officials hadn't gotten around to building a new facility to take care of the dead, and the problem wasn't one that would soon be addressed. As we used to say when I worked in the medical examiner's office, "Dead people don't vote or pay taxes." Dead paupers don't lobby politicians for funding. Even though death is the great equalizer, it doesn't make all dead people equal.

Dr. Phillips settled down and began his examination of Annie Chapman's body. By now, it was in full rigor mortis, which would have been slower to form because of the cool temperature. Dr. Phillips's estimation that Annie had been dead two or three hours when her body was found may have been relatively within bounds. He was out of bounds, however, when he concluded that the small amount of food in her stomach and the absence of liquid meant she was sober when she died.

Body fluids such as blood, urine, and the vitreous humor of the eye were not routinely tested for alcohol or drugs. Had they been, the doctor would most likely have found that Annie was still under the influence of alcohol when she was murdered. The more impaired she was, the better for her killer.

The cuts to Annie's neck were on the "left side of the spine" and were parallel and separated by approximately one-half an inch. The killer had attempted to separate the bones of the neck, suggesting he had tried to decapitate her. Since the cuts were deepest on the left side and trailed off to the right, he was probably right-handed, assuming he attacked her from behind. Annie's lungs and brain showed signs of advanced disease, and despite her obesity, she was malnourished.

At her inquest, Dr. Phillips gave his assessment of the sequence of events causing Annie Chapman's death: Her breathing was interfered with, and then her heart stopped due to blood loss. Death, he said, was the result of "syncope," or a dramatic drop in blood pressure. Had Virginia's chief medical examiner, Dr. Marcella Fierro, been present at the inquest, I can just imagine what she would have said. A drop in blood pressure was a mechanism, not the cause, of Annie Chapman's death. Blood pressure drops when anyone is dying, and there is no blood pressure when the person is dead.

Breathing stops, the heart stops, digestion stops, brain waves go flat when a person dies. Saying a person died of cardiac or respiratory arrest or syncope is like saying a person's blindness is due to his not being able to see. What Dr. Phillips should have told the jury was that the cause of death was exsanguination due to cutting injuries of the neck. I have never understood the logic of a doctor filling in a death certificate with cardiac or respiratory arrest as the cause of death no matter if the poor person was shot, stabbed, beaten, drowned, run over by a car, or hit by a train.

During Annie Chapman's inquest, a juror interrupted Dr. Phillips to ask if he had taken a photograph of Annie's eyes, in the event her retinas might have captured the image of her killer. Dr. Phillips said he had not. He abruptly concluded his testimony by telling Coroner Baxter that the details given were sufficient to account for the victim's death and to go into further detail would "only be painful to the feelings of the jury and the public." Of course, Dr. Phillips added, "I bow to your decision."

Baxter was not of the same opinion. "However painful it may be," he replied, "it is necessary in the interests of justice" that the details of Annie Chapman's murder be given. Dr. Phillips countered, "When I come to speak of the wounds on the lower part of the body I must again repeat my opinion that it is highly injudicious to make the results of my examination public. These details are fit only for yourself, sir, and the jury, but to make them public would simply be disgusting." Coroner Baxter asked all ladies and boys to leave the crowded room. He added that he had "never before heard of any evidence requested being kept back."

Dr. Phillips did not waver in his demurral, and he repeatedly requested that the coroner spare the public any further details. The doctor's requests were denied, and he was given no choice but to reveal all he knew about the mutilation of Annie Chapman's body and the organs and tissue the killer had taken. He testified that had he been the murderer, he could not possibly have inflicted such injuries upon the victim in less than fifteen minutes. Had he, as a surgeon, inflicted such damage with deliberation and skill, he estimated that it would have taken "the better part of an hour."

The more details Dr. Phillips was forced to divulge, the farther off track he stepped. Not only did he reemphasize the illogical assertion that Mary Ann Nichols's abdomen had been slashed before her throat was, but he went on to say that the motive for Annie Chapman's murder was the taking of the "body parts." He added that the killer must possess anatomical knowledge and was possibly associated with a profession that exposed him to dissection or surgery.

The suggestion of using bloodhounds came up, and Dr. Phillips pointed out that this might not be helpful since the blood belonged to the victim and not the killer. It did not occur to him - and perhaps to no one else at the inquest - that bloodhounds aren't called bloodhounds because they are capable of picking up only the scent of blood.

The conflicting witness statements were not resolved during the inquest and never have been. If Annie was murdered as late at 5:30 A.M., as witness statements to the police would lead one to believe, then according to that day's weather report, she was attacked shortly before the sun began to rise. It would be incredibly risky to grab a victim in a populated area, cut her throat, and disembowel her just before sunrise, especially on a market day when people would be out early.