Patricia Cornwell slams Ripper obsession slur

Crime authoratrix Patricia Cornwell has taken out two-full page ads in national newspapers to deny she is obsessed with Jack the Ripper, or more precisely, that painter Walter Sickert was in fact Jack the Ripper.

Cornwell's claim came in her 2002 book Walter Sickert: Whore-murdering scumbag in which she offered some new evidence which seemed to finger Sickert as a suspect in the as-yet-unsolved and therefore highly-lucrative Ripper case.

Experts have, however, dismissed Cornwall's new findings as "complete and utter bol*locks", as one Sickert authority put it. Cornwall has broadsided back with a gauntlet that although she cannot prove Sickert was in Olde London Towne at the time of the murders, it can't be proved he wasn't — known in the literary trade as the "non habeus corpus et in absentia ergo Sickert est" ploy.

Cornwell, dressed as Johnny Depp in From Hell, told a hushed press conference: "My ongoing investigation is far from an obsession but an excellent opportunity to provide a platform for applying modern science to a very old, highly visible case." She then invited the assembled hacks outside where the Red Arrows performed a breathtaking display which created from black smoke a likeness of Walter Sickert slashing one of the Ripper's whimpering victims. Later, from the comfort of the London Eye where Cornwell had converted one of the pods into a reconstruction of the Mary Kelly murder scene, the press pack was treated to a blimp-borne laser display which scored "Prove me wrong if you can" across the night sky after which two hundred skydivers jumped into the void unfurling an an enormous banner bearing a likeness of Sickert as the Devil, complete with horns and a sinister, pointed tail.

Inviting questions from the press, Cornwell dismissed claims that recent DNA evidence suggested Michael Howard was in fact Jack the Ripper and that although a rival author, promoting his latest potboiler Jack the Ripper: Tory Masonic Final Solution, had stated that while it could not be shown Howard was not in Whitechapel in 1888, no-one had come forward to prove he wasn't.

Cornwell thundered: "It's just bloody nonsense. There's not a shred of evidence to back this up. The whole thing is simply a publicity stunt designed to sell more books."

Previously

• Academia rocked by Shakespeare revelation
• Lord Archer to pen Mark Thatcher biograph
• Rushdie in 'Satanic Limericks' outrage