Evening Standard New ID on Jack the Ripper

by Standard Reporter

Crime writer Patricia Cornwell claims to have unearthed proof that Jack the Ripper was in fact the painter Walter Sickert.

The best-selling American novelist spent almost £3million in her investigation, flying US forensic experts to London to examine the notorious Ripper letters. She claims they bear the same distinctive water mark as Sickert's stationery.

Ms Cornwell also bought 30 of the artist's works, ripping one of them up completely in her hunt for clues.

Twenty years after the 1888 crimes Sickert painted a series of gruesome pictures of a murdered prostitute. Ms Cornwell says certain elements in the paintings match scene-of-crime details.

She said: "I do believe 100 per cent that Sickert is the Whitechapel murderer. I am staking my reputation on this." Sickert is regarded as a key link between British art and the growth of Impressionism. But Ms Cornwell claims he led a secret double life as a serial killer - and that the five prostitutes named as the Ripper's victims were not the only women he killed.

She says Sickert had three secret studios in Whitechapel, giving him somewhere to run to as police arrived.

-- Anonymous, December 07, 2001