Ripperologist
My career as a "Ripperologist" -- a term coined by Colin Wilson to describe an expert on Jack the Ripper (but increasingly associated with cranks and charlatans) -- effectively began in 1993. On assignment for Warner Books, Kenneth Rendell and I put together a team of forensic experts to examine -- and ultimately prove a forgery -- the notorious Jack the Ripper Diary. Warner Books cancelled publication, but our findings were included as an appendix in a subsequent edition of The Diary of Jack the Ripper (1993, pictured here).
I was later invited to summarize my findings in a book (also shown here) compiled by Camille Wolff, Who Was Jack the Ripper? A Collection of Present-Day Theories and Observations (London: Grey House Books, 1995, 59-60). I wrote about that case in more detail in my Detecting Forgery (1996) and elsewhere, including an article in the International Journal of Forensic Document Examiners (January/March 1997, 59-63).
I also wrote an "investigative review" of Patricia Cornwell's Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper -- Case Closed (2002): "the Strange Case of Pat the Ripper" (Skeptical Inquirer 27:2 (March/April 2003), 55-58).
On March 1, 2007, while in London on another matter, I was able to go on a nighttime "Ripper" guided tour, visiting the sites of the murders in the Whitechapel district. I wrote a poem out of that experience and no doubt will have more to say in other venues about the "Jack the Ripper" horrors.
