Patricia Cornwell – Portrait Of A Killer Jack The Ripper

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.

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