Jack The Ripper: Far From Case Closed

5 Pages 1287 Words

One of the most notorious of all criminal cases is that of East London’s Whitechapel murders; best known for their bizarre nature, mockery of Scotland Yard, and most notable of all, the fact that to this day they remain unsolved. For well over one hundred years no more than a list of suspects have been ascertained -- that is, until recently when Patricia Cornwell, author of Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper – Case Closed, went out on a limb to declare on ABC’s Primetime that she is “one hundred percent positive that Walter Sickert was indeed the culprit of those serial murders”. To the surprise of many, Cornwell made an important DNA discovery linking Sickert to the case, however, it is unlikely that any of her findings or projections can actually stand up to the concrete theories of most Ripperologists.

Before exploring the reasons for disproving Cornwell’s findings, one must have an understanding of the case in question. Between the months of August and November, 1888, the Whitechapel area of East London played witness to a series of horrific murders committed by an unknown assailant known only by his trade name, Jack the Ripper. “The mysterious culprit struck only at night, and when all was said and done, Jack the Ripper had murdered and mutilated five prostitutes, ranging in age from their teens to mid-thirties” (Paul Begg 26-27). What made this case even more notorious than the fact that no one was ever caught was the series of “Ripper letters” sent during the murders, mocking the justice system, and stunning the masses.

As being on the subject of the suspicious “Ripper letters”, one must bring attention to Patricia Cornwell’s theories and DNA results in regards to Walter Sickert, an impressionist artist of the times. As proclaimed in her appearance on Primetime, Cornwell flew a whole team over to Britain in an attempt to extract DNA evidence from a select portion of “Ripper letters”. Howeve...