Patricia Cornwell Says She Has 'Cracked' The Jack The Ripper Mystery
Has Patricia Cornwell Solved The Jack The Ripper mystery?
The Huffington Post UK
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Has the best-selling crime author Patricia Cornwell solved the Jack the Ripper mystery?
"I feel that I have cracked it," she has said as she revealed she believes she has uncovered new evidence about the identity of London's most famous serial killer.
She has named the culprit as artist Walter Sickert, a British impressionist painter, as she prepares to publish 11 years of new research.
A successful artist, Sickert was known to paint and draw nudes of brutalised women.
Cornwell, 47, who has sold at least 100 million books and is one of the best-selling crime writers alive, believes letters supposedly sent to police by the killer point the finger at the painter.
She also believes she has uncovered new links between her accused suspect and the royal family.
"Will we ever prove it? No -- how can you? It's a completely circumstantial case with the only real science that we can count on after all these years being the forensic analysis, which is really hard to feel is coincidental when you keep seeing water marks on paper that Jack the Ripper and Sickert had in common.
"They are very confessional and violent letters. I do think this series of crimes will forever intrigue people and be cloaked in mystery."
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The Painter Walter Sickert
She added: "I have a lot more detail including more information on what I call the 'royal conspiracy'. I think people might be surprised by my point of view on how that all came into existence. For a start -- Sir William Gull was Queen Victoria's surgeon.
"There have been rumours that Sir William Gull was helping to get rid of these prostitutes. Suffice to say there has been evidence that has turned up to say that Sir William was Sickert's family physician. Some of the people that have been mentioned in the conspiracy ... Sickert had reason to know who some of these people were."
There are hundreds of suspects who have been investigated by sleuths through the years, but no-one has ever been able to conclusively prove the killer's identity.
WARNING: The gallery below contains some graphic content
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The murder of Catherine Eddowes by Jack the Ripper. A sketch by Dr F Gordon Brown made on the spot to show the postition of the body and significant details. (credit:PA)
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The hand written note in the back of the book by Donald Swanson naming Life to the Crime Museum at New Scotland Yard.Picture Date: Thursday 13 July 2006. After Jack the Ripper's suspected true identity has revealed, more than 100 years after his gruesome series of murders. Chief Inspector Donald Swanson never caught the killer, who stalked Whitechapel, east London, in 1888. The Ripper claimed the lives of at least five women, all prostitutes, during his reign of terror. (credit:PA)
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Jack the Ripper An 1880 map of the East End of London where the murders occured. (credit:PA)
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Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street (since renamed Henriques Street) in Whitechapel, the scene of the rippers third murder, that of Swedish-born prostitute Elizabeth "Long Liz" Stride. (credit:PA)
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Jack the Ripper A knife found at the scene of one of the murders. (credit:PA)
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13 Miller's Court, off Dorset Street, London Spitalfields, the site of the last and most terrible of Jack theRipper's murders, that of Mary Jane Kelly (credit:PA)
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The unrecognisable remains of the Ripper's last victim, Mary Jane Kelly. (credit:PA)
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Jack the Ripper Victim (Elizabeth Stride) From a sketch taken at the mortuary by Mr F W Foster 3:45 AM Sunday 30th September 1888 (credit:PA)
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ack the Ripper A Metropoliotan Police sign in an attempt for information including a letter and postcard supposedly written by the murderer. 3rd October 1888 (credit:PA)
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Mary Ann Nicholls, murdered in Bucks Row on 31st August 1888, seen in this mortuary photograph. (credit:PA)
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The back yard of the house at 29 Hanbury Street where the mutilated body of Annie Chapman was found on the morning of 8th September 1888. (credit:PA)
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A letter with the signature of an individual calling themselves 'Jack the Ripper' is seen during a press preview for the exhibition "Jack the Ripper and the East End" at the Museum in Docklands, London, Wednesday, May 14, 2008. (credit:AP)
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A person holds a knife allegedly used by Jack the Ripper during his East End London murders, which forms part of the Jack the Ripper exhibition in the Museum in Docklands opening tomorrow.Picture date: Wednesday May 14, 2008. (credit:PA)