VCU news

By Lorraine Cichowski
VCU News Services

Best-selling author Patricia Cornwell held an audience of 400 book lovers captive with accounts of her Jack the Ripper research as she opened the new Forensics in Literature series sponsored by the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine.

The benefit Feb. 28 at the Virginia Crossings Conference Resort promised a reading by Cornwell, whose most recent novel is "Isle of Dogs," published in October by Penguin Putnam.

Cornwell, however, chose instead to read portions of letters that she told the audience helped her to find the identity of Jack the Ripper, the serial killer who savagely killed five prostitutes in London in 1888. The case never was solved. Cornwell is convinced that the culprit was Walter Sickert, a famous British Impressionist painter.

"I never thought that my mission would be to bring justice to victims murdered more than 100 years ago," Cornwell said.

Cornwell’s novels are published in 34 countries and 31 languages. She is best known for her 11 Kay Scarpetta novels, featuring a tenacious chief medical examiner who tracks serial killers. The Scarpetta character is modeled after Dr. Marcella Fierro, chief medical examiner of Virginia and Cornwell’s friend and former boss.

Cornwell said she originally planned to include a Jack the Ripper connection in her next Scarpetta novels. But, as she researched the case, she decided to try to solve the mystery herself, using modern forensic science.

Over the past 10 months, she said, she has accumulated more than 80 boxes of research and as much physical evidence as she could find still remaining more than a century after the crime. She also bought 30 Sickert paintings and the artist’s painting table, which she tested for DNA in an effort to match it to DNA she hoped to find on letters alleged to have been written by Jack the Ripper.

Unfortunately, she said, in the Jack the Ripper case, forensic science failed her because physical evidence had not been preserved properly over the years, and no DNA was detectable on the samples tested.

"They didn’t know about fingerprints, hairs or fibers. They didn’t know the difference between human and animal blood. People got convicted by eye witness account or confession. That’s what you did back then," she said. "You can see where a complicated case that would have benefited from forensic science goes unsolved."

Cornwell used her own money to fly a forensics team to London. That team was headed by Dr. Paul Ferrara, head of Virginia’s Division of Forensic Science and Distinguished Professor of Forensic Science & Chemistry at Virginia Commonwealth University. Although the DNA testing failed, Cornwell credited Ferrara with the important discovery of a previously undetected watermark on one of Sickert’s letters that matched a watermark on a letter alleged to have been written by Jack the Ripper.

The Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine appearance was the first public appearance for Cornwell since her nationally televised interview on 20/20 in early December where she was interviewed about the Jack the Ripper research. Her nonfiction book on the case is expected to be published this fall.

Cornwell is a former award-winning police reporter for the Charlotte Observer. She worked for more than six years, first as a technical writer and then as a computer analyst, in the Virginia Chief Medical Examiner’s Office. Her gift of $1.5 million launched the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine as a leader in forensic education.

Before Cornwell spoke at the Forensics in Literature benefit, Virginia Commonwealth University English Professor Tom De Haven outlined the history of the modern detective story. De Haven teaches fiction and screenwriting in the MFA Creative Writing Program and is the author of 14 books. His latest book is "Dugan Under Ground."