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1 " Her case in particular haunts me. Despite decades of autopsies and crime scenes, I can honestly say I’ve never encountered the extreme brutality shown in the only existing scene photographs from the Ripper case. "
― Patricia Cornwell , Chasing the Ripper
2 " Certainly the Ripper liked to believe he was actually doing the world a favor by ridding it of “vermin,” as he put it. In his mind, his victims were “whores” who got what they deserved. "
3 " Most of what went wrong in the Ripper investigation was due to ignorance. "
4 " Apparently this was based on postings on the Internet, and I thought it all ridiculous, not quite sure who these Ripperologists were. I joked that their threat brought to mind Klingons in formation ready to fire upon the U.S.S. Enterprise. "
5 " They weren’t interested in another Ripper tease with a fake return address of Punch & Judy St. No attention was paid to several Ripper documents that feature cartoonish stick figures evocative of the violent puppet shows. When Sickert was growing up, his heavy-drinking, sadistic father was an illustrator and scriptwriter for Punch and Judy. "
6 " There are many possible explanations for what stoked his raging, sexually violent compulsions, but the most compelling one is the three surgeries to his genitals and/or rectum that he had endured by the time he was five. He may have been left physically incapable of sex. "
7 " Ms. Fuller explained to me that the reason Sickert gave Ms. Pash for his divulging such a fantastic and shocking story was he wanted the truth “known but not during his lifetime.” To prove his point, Sickert supposedly showed Ms. Pash a number of “murder paintings that he later burned,” Ms. Fuller told me. "
8 " Succinctly put, a crime scene is like an archaeology site. If an excavation is botched or bulldozed away, there’s no going back. "
9 " When the Ripper’s murders began in the summer of 1888, there was no such thing as using science in police investigations. Imagine living in a time when a witness claiming to have seen you in the area of a violent crime might be all it takes to bring about your arrest. Maybe you’re sent to prison. Maybe you’re sentenced to death. "
10 " It’s fascinating to ponder the name Jack the Ripper. Who thought of it? I’m quite certain he did. The Ripper’s communications indicate he dubbed himself that and many other variations of it. He called himself all sorts of things, whatever pleased and amused him at the moment. Sickert was accustomed to having stage names. As a child he was acting in his homespun Shakespeare plays, and when he reached his teens he chose the theater as a career. "
11 " WALTER SICKERT was connected with Jack the Ripper long before I appeared on the scene. I’m not the first one to think of him. But I’m the first to investigate him the same way we would a suspect today. "
12 " As an actor, he called himself Mr. Nemo. Nemo is Latin for nobody, and he very well may have felt like one. "
13 " I don’t believe for a minute that the Ripper killed only the prostitutes we hear about—five and only five. "
14 " THE QUESTIONS I’m asked most frequently have nothing to do with my Scarpetta novels or my personal life. People want to know why I remain convinced that Jack the Ripper was the celebrated British artist Walter Richard Sickert. "
15 " Prior to my investigation into this case, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed, it doesn’t appear that any significance was attributed to the fact that some of the mocking, taunting communications the Ripper sent to the police and the press were signed Nemo. He also signed a postal telegram Mr. Nobody, then crossed it out and wrote Jack the Ripper instead "
16 " I put his toll at a dozen, maybe as many as twenty or possibly more, and he didn’t slaughter only prostitutes—or “Unfortunates,” as they were called. It’s also not true that he struck exclusively in the East End slums or even just in London. He killed in multiple cities, and he quickly escalated to mutilation, dismemberment and possibly cannibalism. His victim selection began to include children, and he boasted about all of it in his written communications that for the most part were ignored. "
17 " Imagine living in a time when a witness claiming to have seen you in the area of a violent crime might be all it takes to bring about your arrest. Maybe you’re sent to prison. Maybe you’re sentenced to death. "
18 " prostitute he just murdered. It’s called The Camden Town Murder "
