Jack the Ripper

He terrorized the streets of London's East End for three months in the autumn of 1888. He did this by killing, and then butchering, five women? at least. This brief murder spree earned the killer the grand daddy of all nicknames. That name, and the grotesque way he dispatched his victims has made Jack the Ripper the most notorious serial killer of all time. But no one knows who he was. In the years since the Ripper plied his grisly trade, the search for his identity has practically become a cottage industry. And it's still going on. But is the search getting any closer to the truth? Some people believe the answer is yes. Crime writer Patricia Cornwell has peaked the world's interest, and animosity, with her new book on the Ripper's identity. Like almost everyone who has studied Jack the Ripper, Cornwell has a theory about who he was. The evidence she has amassed points to a prominent British artist named Walter Sickert, who was 28 at the time of the murders, and seemed to take an unusual interest in them. Sickert's artwork is macabre, his relationship with women dubious, and his childhood ripe for Freudian analysis. But can any of this prove he was a serial killer of prostitutes? For this, Cornwell points to the largest body of physical evidence remaining in the Ripper case: the hundreds of letters written to police during the time of the murders, supposedly by the murderer himself. Cornwell believes the letters tell a story - not just through their words, but also in the way those words were formed, the paper they were written on, and the sketches in the margins. She believes some of the letters are the work of Walter Sickert, and we'll talk to the paper and art conservators and handwriting analysts who are scouring the letters for clues. Meanwhile, other theories about the Ripper's identity abound. We visit the murder sites with Ivor Edwards, a professional criminal turned amateur sleuth, who believes Jack the Ripper was a black magic occultist. Edwards reveals a pattern to the crimes that he believes incriminates suspect Robert Donston Stephenson, who may have killed his victims at strategic points on a map in order to desecrate the Christian cross. If Edwards' theory sounds far-fetched, it isn't the first. There is also the Freemason angle - pointing to similarities between the ritualistic nature of the murders and ancient Masonic rites...