In the “flogging a dead horse” department

So when Patricia Cornwell’s PORTRAIT OF A KILLER was released way back in 2002, many folks — myself included — dismissed it as a bunch of hooey (read the opening prologue where she recounts a conversation she had with her agent, Esther Newberg and you’ll see what I mean. She had more fervor about Walter Sickert being the killer than Tom Cruise does about psychotherapy being evil.)

But has the criticism fazed her? Noooo.Because she’s testing for more evidence that Sickert really did it:

She originally claimed to have solved the riddle of the Ripper’s identity after spending about £2m of her own money gathering DNA evidence, hiring handwriting experts and buying 30 of Sickert’s paintings.

This time, she is enlisting the help of a criminal psychologist and handwriting expert, and a forensic photographer, to gather more evidence for the new edition of her book, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed.

The forensic photographer has taken images of fingerprints left in ink on some of the 600 letters sent to police at the time of the murders in 1888 and claiming to be from the Ripper. Most are widely considered to be hoaxes, but Cornwell believes that at least some were penned by the murderer.

About 300 are held at the London Metropolitan Archives, along with the coroner’s reports into two of the deaths.

"Ms Cornwell is looking to reinterpret some of the documents, and wanted to let her forensic specialists make their own assessments of what they saw," said Deborah Jenkins, head archivist.

Not surprisingly, these new efforts are being taken just as seriously as the first round:

Trevor Marriott, a former murder squad detective and the author of Jack the Ripper: the 21st Century Investigation, believes there might have been up to nine victims and that the culprit was a merchant seaman.

"The Walter Sickert theory is not taken seriously," he said.

"If Patricia Cornwell found those fingerprints, all she would prove was that Sickert wrote at least one, or possibly more, of the hoax letters.

"At the end of the day, you still need hard evidence rather than speculation, but maybe she is doing this because she is miffed at the criticism she received."

Maybe Cornwell will be checking out area golf courses for the Real Killer, too…