Crime writer Patricia Cornwell 'more certain than ever' that artist was Jack the Ripper as she revisits investigation on which she spent £2m
Sophie Kirkham
Monday August 22, 2005
The Guardian
Cornwell is convinced that the painter Walter Sickert was the Ripper ... Sickert's Self Portrait. Photograph: ©: Leeds City Art Gallery
When the crime writer Patricia Cornwell claimed to have discovered the identity of Jack the Ripper, she staked her reputation on it and said she was "100% sure" she had unmasked the killer.
But nearly three years on, Cornwell has gone back to the archives to gather more fingerprint evidence to bolster her case and try to silence her critics.
Cornwell is convinced that the painter Walter Sickert was the Ripper, but art and crime historians have said her theory is far fetched and her evidence circumstantial.
She originally claimed to have solved the riddle of the Ripper's identity after spending about £2m of her own money gathering DNA evidence, hiring handwriting experts and buying 30 of Sickert's paintings.
This time, she is enlisting the help of a criminal psychologist and handwriting expert, and a forensic photographer, to gather more evidence for the new edition of her book, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed.
The forensic photographer has taken images of fingerprints left in ink on some of the 600 letters sent to police at the time of the murders in 1888 and claiming to be from the Ripper. Most are widely considered to be hoaxes, but Cornwell believes that at least some were penned by the murderer.
About 300 are held at the London Metropolitan Archives, along with the coroner's reports into two of the deaths.
"Ms Cornwell is looking to reinterpret some of the documents, and wanted to let her forensic specialists make their own assessments of what they saw," said Deborah Jenkins, head archivist.
The writer and two colleagues - a psychologist, Staci Gruber, and a crime scene investigator, Susan Courtney - spent several hours with the original documents.
Cornwell said: "It was mentioned to me there might be a possibly interesting Sickert fingerprint in a conservation laboratory in Brighton; and then there are supposed fingerprints on the Jack the Ripper letter.
"The ones in Brighton were fairly decent, but the ones in London were not so good. So far, the examination has not been fruitful, but some things are still being examined now, and I don't have the results yet.
"The entire central region of the fingerprint on the letters was missing and an expert here in America told me that this can happen to people who handle a lot of paper, perhaps like Sickert."
She added: "When you accuse someone of terrible crimes, you are obliged to pursue any evidence that comes up. This is a little bit like chasing a falling star, when you are looking at documents more than 100 years old, but I have never treated this as a book you write and walk away from.
"I am more certain than ever that Walter Sickert was the Ripper and I have no doubt that he wrote quite a number of the letters. As far as putting him at the crime scene, what I have is an abundance of circumstantial evidence.
"Every time something comes up, whether it is fingerprints or further DNA, or further examination of documents, I feel it is important to pursue that.
"This is also a wonderful platform for applying modern science to a very old crime."
Between August and November 1888, five women were murdered in the East End of London. Nobody was ever convicted of the crimes and it has become one of the world's greatest murder mysteries.
The victims, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly were all mutilated by their attacker.
Cornwell believes Sickert, who made no secret of his fascination with the killings, gave himself away in his artwork, which is said to depict some of the crime scenes.
She also claims to have found DNA matching him to the Ripper letters. This, however, was in the form of mitochondrial DNA, which is only about as distinctive as blood type.
Trevor Marriott, a former murder squad detective and the author of Jack the Ripper: the 21st Century Investigation, believes there might have been up to nine victims and that the culprit was a merchant seaman.
"The Walter Sickert theory is not taken seriously," he said.
"If Patricia Cornwell found those fingerprints, all she would prove was that Sickert wrote at least one, or possibly more, of the hoax letters.
"At the end of the day, you still need hard evidence rather than speculation, but maybe she is doing this because she is miffed at the criticism she received."
The usual suspects
· Queen Victoria's grandson, Prince Albert Victor, is a popular Ripper suspect among conspiracy theorists. His name surfaced in Phillippe Jullien's biography of Edward VII in 1962
· The royal theme continues with Queen Victoria's physician, Sir William Gull, who is suspected of carrying out the murders to cover up Prince Albert's affair with a commoner whose nanny was the victim Mary Kelly
· Last year Trevor Marriott, a former murder squad detective with Bedfordshire police, identified Polish immigrant, George Chapman as the killer. He said Chapman, who trained as a surgeon, had the medical skills to disembowel his victims
· A prime suspect is Francis Tumblety, an American who had a collection of female body parts in his New York home. A misogynist and unqualified doctor, he was arrested but never charged. The Ripper murders stopped after he left England in November 1888
Alan Power
www.guardian.co.uk