AN AUTHOR who claims she has spent millions trying to find out once and for all who Jack the Ripper was says she has reached a definitive conclusion.

Patricia Cornwell says that renowned British Impressionist painter Walter Sickert was the notorious mass killer.

The 60-year-old told The Mirror: "I spent about £5.7million overall in my investigation, including employing some of the best and brightest experts in the world.

"A lot of people couldn’t have done what I have because they wouldn’t have the money.

"I am trying to do the right thing.

"If someone proves me wrong, bring it."

Cornwell first came up with her Sickert theory 15 years ago, writing about it in her 2002 book Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper – Case Closed.

She has now further developed the theory with what she claims is new evidence in her new book Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert.

Sickert was born in Germany but moved to Britain with his family in 1868.

He became known as an artist obsessed with urban culture, and championed avant-garde artists.

Sickert was obsessed with Jack the Ripper's crimes, and claimed to have stayed in a room used by the killer.

Claims such as these have led to rumours that Sickert was the serial killer's accomplice, however Cornwell alleges that he was in fact the killer himself.

One reason for her theory is the disturbing nature of his paintings, and how they share similarities with Jack the Ripper crime scenes.

For example, Sickert’s painting Sickert’s Nuit d’ete evokes victim Mary Kelly’s death bed scene.

And another of his paintings, Putana a Casa, shows a prostitute with bizarre black brush strokes on her face.

This is eerily similar to the savage cuts on the postmortem picture of Catherine Eddowes’ face.

In her new book she also casts doubt over Sickert's alibis on the night of some of the killings.

She even claims Sickert dressed up as the Ripper while painting, and that he admitted to a friend "he would not mind having to kill and eat raw flesh".

Cornwell also claims in her book that strange doodles in Sickert's notes have similarities with the Ripper's letters which were sent to police officers at the time.

Patricia has spent millions of pounds conducting her own investigations into the unidentified killer.

She even purchased Sickert’s desk and 32 of his paintings which she has had tested for DNA.

Another key part of her theory is her claim that Sickert was in Cornwall at the same time a guestbook at a bed and breakfast there was defaced with sexually crude drawings, signed by 'Jack The Ripper, of Whitechapel'.

Patricia backs up the claims of the late picture-framer Joseph Gorman, who was adamant he was Sickert's illegitimate son and that the artist confessed details about the Ripper to him.

While Gorman's claims were dismissed as fantasy, the crime novelist says she has evidence that he inherited Sickert's publishing royalties following his death in 1942.

While the writer has admitted in the past that the true identity of the Ripper can never be fully known, she says her book offers a compelling argument.

Walter Sickert isn't the only person in the frame...

There has been a great deal of speculation as to the true identity of Jack the Ripper

  • Police first suspected the Ripper to have been a butcher, due to the way he killed his victims and the fact they were found near the dockyards, where meat was imported into the city.
  • A book accused Queen Victoria's surgeon, Sir John Williams, of being the killer, as he had a surgery in Whitechapel at the time.
  • One controversial theory linked the murders with Queen Victoria's grandson, Prince Albert Victor - also known as the Duke of Clarence.
  • Cotton merchant James Maybrick was the prime suspect after extracts of his diary appeared to suggest he was the murderer. These were later deemed to have been forged.
  • Another suspect was Dorset-born barrister Montague John Druitt, who committed suicide in the Thames shortly after last murder.
  • George Chapman, otherwise known as Seweryn Kłosowski, was in the frame after he poisoned three of his wives. He was hanged in 1903.
  • Aaron Kosminski was a police suspect and was admitted to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, where he died.
  • Dr Thomas Neill Cream was hanged after he was found guilty of poisoning four London prostitutes with strychnine.
  • Bizarrely, Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll, was once in the frame. He taught at Christ Church until 1881, which was at the forefront of the Ripper Murder scenery.
  • Lord Randolph Churchill, whose son was Winston Churchill, has also been named as a potential suspect.

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