Portrait of a Killer

by Patricia Cornwell

  Martha Tabran’s cause of death should have been exsanguination due to multiple stab wounds. There was no suitable mortuary in the East End, and Dr. Killeen performed the postmortem examination at a nearby dead house or shed. He attributed a single wound to the heart as “sufficient to cause death.” A stab wound to the heart that does not nick or sever an artery can certainly cause death if it is not treated immediately by surgery in a trauma unit. But people have been known to survive after being stabbed in the heart with knives, ice picks, and other instruments. What causes the heart to stop pumping is not the wound, but the leakage of blood that fills the pericardium or sac that surrounds the heart.

  Knowing whether Martha’s pericardial sac was filled with blood would not only assuage a medical curiosity, it might also give a hint as to how long she survived as she bled from other stab wounds. Every detail helps the dead speak, and Dr. Killeen’s descriptions tell us so little that we don’t know if the weapon was double- or single-edged. We don’t know what the angle of trajectory was, which would help position the killer in relation to Martha at the time of each injury. Was she standing or lying down? Were any of the wounds large or irregular, which would be consistent with the weapon twisting as it was withdrawn because the victim was still moving? Did the weapon have a guard—often mistakenly called a hilt (swords have hilts)? Knife guards leave contusions—bruises—or abrasions on the skin.

  Reconstructing how a victim died and determining the type of weapon used begin to paint a portrait of the killer. Details hint at his intent, emotions, activity, fantasies, and even his occupation or profession. The height of the killer can also be conjectured. Martha was five foot three. If the killer was taller than she and the two of them were standing when he began stabbing her, then one would expect her initial wounds to be high up on her body and angled down. If both of them were standing, it would have been difficult for him to stab her in the stomach and genitals, unless he was very short. Most likely, those injuries would have been inflicted when she was on the ground.

  Dr. Killeen assumed the killer was very strong. Adrenaline and rage are terrifically energizing and can produce a great deal of strength. But the Ripper didn’t need superhuman strength. If his weapon was pointed, strong, and sharp, he didn’t need much power to penetrate skin, organs, and even bone. Dr. Killeen also mistakenly assumed that a wound penetrating the sternum or “chest bone” could not have been inflicted by a “knife.” He jumped from that conclusion to his next one: that two weapons were involved, possibly a “dagger” and a “knife,” leading to an early theory that the killer might be ambidextrous.

  Even if he was, the image of a man simultaneously stabbing Martha with a dagger in one hand and a knife in the other in darkness is bizarre and absurd, and chances are good he would have stabbed himself a few times. What is known of the medical evidence does not point to an ambidextrous assault. Martha’s left lung was penetrated in five places. The heart, which is on the left side of the body, was stabbed once. A right-handed person is more likely to inflict injuries to the left side of the body if the victim is facing him.

  A penetration of the sternum does not merit the emphasis Dr. Killeen gave it. A sharp-pointed knife can penetrate bone, including the skull. In a case that occurred in Germany decades before the Ripper began his spree, a man murdered his wife by stabbing her through the sternum, and later confided to the forensic examiner that the “table knife” penetrated the bone as easily as if it were “butter.” The edges of the wound indicated that the table knife cleanly penetrated the bone once and went through the right lung, the pericardium, and the aorta.

  Dr. Killeen’s belief that two weapons were used in Martha Tabran’s murder was buttressed by a difference in the size of the stab wounds. However, this discrepancy can be accounted for if the blade was wider at the guard than it was at the tip. Stab wounds can be different widths depending on their depth, the twisting of the blade, and the elasticity of the tissue or the part of the body being penetrated. It is hard to ascertain what Dr. Killeen meant by a knife or a dagger, but a knife usually refers to a single-edged blade while a dagger is narrow and double-edged and has a pointed tip. The terms knife and dagger are often used as synonyms, as are the terms revolver and pistol.

  As I was researching the Ripper cases, I explored the types of cutting instruments that might have been available to him. The variety and availability is bewildering, if not depressing. British travelers to Asia returned home with all sorts of souvenirs, some better suited than others for stabbing or cutting. The Indian pesh kabz is a fine example of a weapon that could leave wounds of several different widths, depending on their depth. The strong steel blade of this “dagger,” as it was called, could create an array of wounds that would perplex any medical examiner, even now.

  The curved blade is almost an inch and a half wide at the ivory handle, and becomes double-edged two-thirds of the way up when it begins to taper off to a point as thin as a needle. The one I bought from an antiques dealer was made in 1830 and (including its sheath) would easily fit in one’s waistband, boot, or deep coat pocket—or up a sleeve. The curved blade of the Oriental dagger called a djambia (circa 1840) would also leave wounds of different widths, although the entire blade is double-edged.

  The Victorians enjoyed an abundance of beautiful weapons that were made for killing human beings and were cavalierly collected during travels abroad or bought for a bargain at bazaars. In one day, I discovered the following Victorian weapons at a London antiques fair and at the homes of two antiques dealers in Sussex: daggers, kukris, a dagger stick disguised to look like a polished tree branch, daggers disguised to look like canes, tiny six-shot revolvers designed to fit neatly into a gentleman’s vest pocket or a lady’s purse, “cut throat razors,” Bowie-type knives, swords, rifles, and beautifully decorated truncheons, including a “Life Preserver” that is weighted with lead. When Jack the Ripper cruised for weapons, he was blessed with an embarrassment of riches.

  No weapon was ever recovered in Martha Tabran’s murder, and since Dr. Killeen’s autopsy report seems to be missing—as are many records related to the Jack the Ripper case—all I had to go on were the sketchy details of the inquest. Of course I cannot determine with absolute certainty the weapon that took Martha’s life, but I can speculate: Based on the frenzied attack and subsequent wounds, it may very well have been what the Victorians called a dagger—or a weapon with a strong blade, a sharp point, and a substantial handle designed to stab without the risk of the perpetrator’s losing his grip and cutting himself.

  If it is true that there were no defense injuries, such as cuts or bruises on Martha’s hands or arms, their absence suggests she did not put up much of a struggle, even if her clothing was “disarrayed.” Without more detail about exactly how her clothing was “disarrayed,” I can’t surmise whether she had begun to undress when she was attacked; whether the killer rearranged, undid, cut, or ripped her clothing; or whether he did so before or after her death. In criminal cases of that era, clothing was important mainly for purposes of identifying the victim. It wasn’t necessarily examined for tears, cuts, seminal fluid, or any other type of evidence. After the victim was identified, the clothing was usually tossed out the dead-house door into an alleyway. As the Ripper’s victim count went up, some socially minded people thought it might be a good idea to collect the clothing of the dead and donate it to paupers.

  In 1888, little was known about the behavior of blood. It has a character all its own and a behavior that dutifully abides by the laws of physics. It isn’t like any other liquid, and when it is pumping at a high pressure through a person’s arteries, it is not going to simply drip or slowly drain when one of those arteries is cut. At Martha’s crime scene inside the stairwell, a high arterial spatter pattern on a wall would indicate that the stab wound to her neck severed an artery and occurred while she was standing and still had a blood pressure. An arterial pattern peaks and dips in rhythm with the heart and would also indicate whether a vict
im was on the ground when an artery was cut. The examination of the pattern helps establish the sequence of events during the attack. If a major artery is severed and there is no arterial spatter, in all likelihood other injuries have already just about extinguished the victim’s life.

  The stabbing and cutting wounds to Martha Tabran’s genitals indicate a sexual component to the crime. Yet if it is true—as it seems to have been in all of the alleged Ripper murders—that there was no indication of “connection,” as the Victorians called intercourse, then this is a pattern that should have been treated very seriously, but wasn’t. I am not sure how a “connection” was determined. The problem with a prostitute is she may have “connected” numerous times in one night, and rarely if ever cleaned off the many levels of civilization she carried on her body.

  Furthermore, body fluids could not be tested for blood type or DNA, nor was there any attempt to distinguish between human and animal blood in criminal investigations. Had there been evidence of recent sexual activity, the seminal fluid would have been of no forensic value. However, a consistent absence of seminal fluid or evidence of attempted intercourse—as is true in every Ripper murder—suggests that the killer did not engage in sexual activity with the victim before or after death. This pattern is not unheard of but it is uncommon with violent psychopaths, who may rape as they kill, climax as their victims die, or masturbate over the bodies after death. The lack of seminal fluid in the Ripper lust murders is consistent with the supposition that Sickert was incapable of sex.

  By modern standards, Martha Tabran’s murder was investigated so poorly that it could hardly be called an investigation at all. Her murder did not excite the police or the press. There was virtually no public mention of her brutal slaying until the first inquest hearing on August 10th. There was little follow-up as time passed. Martha Tabran wasn’t important to anyone in particular. It was assumed, as we used to say when I worked in the morgue, that she simply died the way she lived.

  Her murder was savage, but it was not seen as the initial attack of an evil force that had invaded the Great Metropolis. Martha was a filthy worn-out whore and deliberately placed herself at great risk by the life she chose to live. She willingly plied a trade that required her to elude the police as much as her murderer did, it was pointed out in the press. It was hard to feel much pity for the likes of her, and public sentiment then was really no different from what it is now: The victim is to blame. Excuses in modern courtrooms are just as disheartening and infuriating. If she hadn’t dressed that way; if he hadn’t driven into that part of town; if she didn’t go to bars looking for a man; I told her not to go jogging in that area of the park; what do you expect when you let your child walk home alone from the bus stop? As my mentor Dr. Marcella Fierro, chief medical examiner of Virginia, says, “A woman has a right to walk around naked and not be raped or murdered.” Martha Tabran had a right to live.

  “The inquiry,” Chief Inspector Donald Swanson summarized in his report, “was confined amongst persons of deceased’s class in the East End, but without any success.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A GLORIOUS BOY

  Walter Richard Sickert was born May 31, 1860, in Munich, Germany.

  One of England’s most important artists wasn’t English. The “thoroughly English” Walter, as he was often described, was the son of a thoroughly Danish artist named Oswald Adalbert Sickert and a not-so-thoroughly English-Irish beauty named Eleanor Louisa Moravia Henry. As a child, Walter was thoroughly German.

  Sickert’s mother was called “Nelly”; his younger sister, Helena, was called “Nellie”; and Sickert’s first wife, Ellen Cobden, was called “Nelly.” Ellen Terry was called “Nelly.” For purposes of clarity, I will not use the name “Nelly” except when referring to Sickert’s mother, and I will resist giving in to the temptation to resort to Oedipal psychobabble because the four strongest women in Sickert’s life had the same nickname.

  Walter was the firstborn of six children—five boys and one girl. Remarkably, it appears that not one of them would ever have children. Each child apparently had a curdled chemistry, except, perhaps, Oswald Valentine, a successful salesman about whom, it seems, nothing else is known. Robert would become a recluse and die from injuries sustained when he was hit by a lorry. Leonard always seemed strangely detached from reality and would die after a long battle with substance abuse. Bernhard was a failed painter and suffered from depression and alcoholism. A poetic observation their father, Oswald, wrote seems tragically prophetic:Where there is freedom, there, of course,

  the bad thing has to be free, too, but it dies,

  since it carries the germ of destruction within

  itself and dies of its own consequence/logicality.

  The Sickerts’ only daughter, Helena, had a brilliant mind and a fiery spirit, but a body that failed her all of her life. She was the only member of the family who seemed interested in humanitarian causes and other people. She would explain in her autobiography that early suffering made her compassionate and gave her sensitivity toward others. She was sent off to a harsh boarding school where she ate terrible food and was humiliated by the other girls because she was sickly and clumsy. The males in her home made her believe she was ugly. She was inferior because she wasn’t a boy.

  Walter was the third generation of artists. His grandfather, Johann Jurgen Sickert, was so gifted as a painter that he earned the patronage of Denmark’s King Christian VIII. Walter’s father, Oswald, was a talented painter and graphic artist who could make neither a name for himself nor a living. An old photograph shows him with a long bushy beard and cold eyes that glint of anger. Along with most of the Sickert family, details about him have faded like a poorly made daguerreotype. A search of records came up with a small collection of his writings and art that are included with his son’s papers at Islington Public Libraries. Oswald’s handwritten high German had to be translated into low German and then English, a process that took about six months and produced only sixty fragments of pages because most of what he wrote was impossible to read and could not be deciphered at all.

  But what could be made out gave me a glimpse of an extraordinarily strong-willed, complex, and talented man who wrote music, plays, and poetry. His gift of words and his theatrical flair made him a favorite for giving speeches at weddings, carnivals, and other social events. He was active politically during the Danish-German War of 1864 and traveled quite a lot to different cities, encouraging the working men to pull together for a united Germany.

  “I want your help,” he said in one undated speech. “Everyone of you needs to do his share. . . . It is also up to those of you who deal with the workers, to the larger tradesmen, factory owners, among you, it is up to you to care for the honest worker.” Oswald could rouse the spirits of the oppressed. He could also compose beautiful music and poetic verses full of tenderness and love. He could create cartoonlike artwork that reveals a cruel and fiendish sense of fun. Pages of his diaries show that when Oswald wasn’t sketching, he was wandering, a practice imitated by his eldest son.

  Oswald was always on the move, so much so that one wonders when he got his work done. His walks might consume the better part of the day, or perhaps he was on a train somewhere until late at night. A cursory sampling of his activities reveals a man who could scarcely sit still and constantly did what he pleased. The diary pages are incomplete and undated, but his words portray him as a self-absorbed, moody, restless man.

  During one week, on Wednesday, Oswald Sickert traveled by train from Eckernförde to Schleswig to Echen to Flensburg in northern Germany. Thursday, he took a look “at the new road along the railroad” and walked “along the harbor to the Nordertor [North Gate]” and across a field “to the ditch and home.” He ate lunch and spent the afternoon at “Notke’s beergarden.” From there he visited a farm and then went home. Friday: “Went by myself” to visit Allenslob, Nobbe, Jantz, Stropatil, and Möller. He met up with a group of people, ate dinner with them, and at 10:00
P.M. returned home. Saturday: “Went for a walk by myself through the city.”

  Sunday he was out of the house all day, then he had dinner, and afterward there was music and singing at home until 10:00 P.M. Monday, he walked to Gottorf, then “back across over the property/estates and the peat bog. . . .” Tuesday, he went by horse to Mugner’s, fished until 3:00 P.M. and caught “30 perch.” He visited with acquaintances at a pub. “Ate and drank” lunch. “Return at 11:00 P.M.”

  Oswald’s writings make it clear he hated authority, particularly police, and his angry, mocking words eerily portend Jack the Ripper’s own taunts to the police: “Catch me if you can,” the Ripper repeatedly wrote.

  “—Hooray! The watchman is asleep!” wrote Walter Sickert’s father. “When you see him like that, you wouldn’t believe that he is a watchman. Shall I nudge him out of love for humanity and tell him what the bell has tolled [or what trouble he is in for] . . . . O no, let him slumber. Maybe he dreams that he has me, let him hold on to this illusion.”

  Oswald’s sentiments about authority must have been voiced within the walls of his home, and Walter could not have been oblivious to them. Nor could he or his mother have been unaware of Oswald’s frequent visits to beer gardens and pubs—to his being “plied with punch.”