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

The Ripper panic was not suddenly resurrected after Emily's homicide, and Sickert's name was never mentioned in connection with the crime. There were no Ripper-type letters to the press or the police, but curiously enough, right after Emily's homicide a Harold Ashton, a reporter for the Morning Leader, went to the police and showed them photographs of four postcards sent to the editor. It is not clear from the police report who sent these postcards, but the implication is they were signed "A.C.C." Ashton inquired if the police were aware that the writer of the postcards might be a "racing man." The reporter went on to point out the following:

A postmark dated January 2, 1907, London, was the first day of racing after "a spell of wintry weather," and the race that day was at Gatwick.

A second postcard was dated August 9, 1907, Brighton, and the Brighton races were held on the 6th, 7th, and 8th and at Lewes on the 9th and 10th of that month. The reporter said that many people who attended the races at Lewes stayed the weekend in Brighton.

A third postcard was dated August 19, 1907, Windsor, and the Windsor races were held on Friday and Saturday, the 16th and 17th of that month.

The fourth postcard was dated September 9th, two days before Emily's murder, and one day before the Doncaster autumn race in Yorkshire. But what was very strange about this card, Ashton pointed out, is that it was a French postcard that appeared to have been purchased in Chantilly, France, where a race had been held the week before the Doncaster autumn race. Ashton said, according to the rather confusing police report, that he believed "the post card may have been purchased in France, possibly at Chantilly, brought over and posted with English stamps at Don-caster" - as if to imply it had been mailed from Doncaster during the races. Had the sender attended the Doncaster autumn races, he could not have been in Camden Town at the time of Emily's September 11th murder. The Doncaster races were held on the 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th of September.

Ashton was asked to withhold this information from his newspaper, which he did. On September 30th, Inspector A. Hailstone jotted on the report that the police thought Ashton was correct about the dates of the races, but the reporter was "quite wrong" about the postmark of the fourth postcard. "It is clearly marked London NW." Apparently, it didn't strike Inspector Hailstone as somewhat odd that a French postcard apparently written two days before Emily Dimmock's murder was for some reason mailed in London to a London newspaper. I don't know if "A.C.C." were the initials of an anonymous sender or meant something else, but it seems that the police might have questioned why a "racing man" would have sent these postcards to a newspaper at all.

It might have occurred to Inspector Hailstone that what this racing man had accomplished, whether he intended to or not, was to make it clear he had a habit of attending horse races and was at Doncaster on the date the much-publicized murder of Emily Dimmock occurred. If Sickert was now supplying himself with alibis instead of taunting the police with his "catch me if you can" communications, his actions would make perfect sense. At this stage in his life, his violent psychopathic drive would have lessened. It would be highly unusual for him to continue maniacal killing sprees that required tremendous energy and obsessive focus. If he committed murder, he did not want to be caught. His violent energy had been dissipated - although not eradicated - by age and his career.

When Sickert began his infamous paintings and etchings of nude women sprawled on iron bedsteads - the Camden Town Murder and L'affair de Camden Town, or Jack Ashore or the clothed man in Despair who sits on a bed, his face in his hands - he was simply viewed as a respected artist who had chosen the Camden Town murder as a narrative theme in his work. It wouldn't be until many years later that a detail would link him to the Camden Town murder. On November 29, 1937, the Evening Standard printed a short article about Sickert's Camden Town murder paintings, and stated, "Sickert, who was living in Camden Town, was permitted to enter the house where the murder was committed and did several sketches of the murdered woman's body."

Supposing this is true, was it another Sickert coincidence that he just happened to be wandering along St. Paul's Road when he noticed a swarm of police and wanted to see what all the excitement was about? Emily's body was discovered about 11:30 A.M. Not long after Dr. Thompson examined it at 1:00 P.M., it was removed to the St. Pancras mortuary. There was a relatively short time period of maybe two to three hours for Sickert to have happened by while Emily's body was still inside the house. If he had no idea when her body would be found, he would have had to case the area for many hours - and risk being noticed - to make sure he didn't miss the show.

A simple solution is suggested by the missing three keys. Sickert might have locked the doors behind him as he left the house - especially the inner and outer doors to Emily's rooms - to make it less likely that her body would be found before Shaw came home at 11:30 in the morning. Had Sickert been stalking Emily, he certainly would have known when Shaw left the house for work and when he returned. While the landlady might not have entered a locked room, Shaw would have, had Emily not responded to his calling out and knocking.

Sickert might have taken the keys as a souvenir. I see no reason for him to need them to make his escape after Emily's murder. It is possible that the three stolen keys could have given him a curtain time of approximately 11:30 A.M. So he just happened to show up at the crime scene before the body was removed and innocently ask the police if he might have a look inside and do a few sketches. Sickert was the local artist, a charming fellow. I doubt the police would have refused him his request. They probably told him all about the crime. Many a police officer likes to talk, especially when a major crime is committed on his shift. At the most, police might have found Sickert's interest eccentric, but not suspicious. I found no mention in police reports that Sickert appeared at the crime scene, or that any artist did. But when I've shown up at crime scenes as a journalist and author, my name has never been entered into reports, either.

Sickert's appearing at the scene also gave him an alibi. Should the police have discovered fingerprints that for some reason or another were ever identified as Walter Richard Sickert's, so what? Sickert had been inside Emily Dimmock's house. He had been inside her bedroom. One would expect him to have left fingerprints and maybe a few hairs or who knows what else while he was busy moving around, sketching, and chatting with the police or with Shaw and his mother.

It was not out of character for Sickert to sketch dead bodies. During World War I, he was obsessed with wounded and dying soldiers and their uniforms and weapons. He collected a pile of them and maintained close relations with people at the Red Cross, asking them to let him know when uniforms might not be needed any longer by ill-fated patients. "I have got a capital fellow," he wrote to Nan Hudson in the fall of 1914. "The ideal noble 6c somewhat beefy young Briton… amp; I have already drawn him alive 8c dead."

In several letters she wrote to Janie in 1907, Ellen inquires about "poor young Woods" and wants to know what happened when his case went to trial late that year. Ellen was overseas, and if she was referring to the eventual arrest, indictment, and trial of Robert Wood, accused and later acquitted of being Emily Dimmock's killer, she may have gotten the name slightly wrong, but the question was an atypical one for her to ask. She did not refer to criminal cases in her correspondence. I have found not a single mention of the Ripper murders or any others. For her to suddenly want to know about "poor young Woods" is perplexing, unless "Woods" is not really Robert Wood, but someone else.