Johnny Depp in From Hell where he plays a cop probing Ripper murders

London, June 27 (Reuters): A mental patient, a butcher, the artist Walter Sickert, a serial wife poisoner and even Queen Victoria’s grandson have all been touted as Jack the Ripper suspects in one of the greatest whodunits in history.

But what if Jack the Ripper was not a Londoner, not even British? What if he was a merchant seaman, who pursued his blood lust as far afield as Nicaragua and Germany?

Ripperologists ? self-appointed sleuths on the Ripper’s trail who number in the thousands ? are in a spin over a book proposing Britain’s most famous serial killer was a merchant sailor who murdered when his ship was docked.

In London’s grimy East End the Ripper slew five prostitutes over 10 weeks in 1888, leaving their throats slashed from ear to ear and lacerations up and down the bodies of all but one of the victims.

Trevor Marriott, a former detective and author of the controversial new book Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation, says police on the case wrongly assumed that the killer lived and worked in London’s East End and failed to see a pattern between the dates of the crimes. “I believe the police were blinkered and didn’t choose to look at the possibility the killer could be a merchant seaman,” he said.

The Ripper has spawned a multi-million pound industry in books, souvenirs, a musical and films ? most recently From Hell starring Johnny Depp as a clairvoyant cop investigating the murders ? showing the fascination with the murderer is very much alive.

Marriott believes the murderer arrived on one of a handful of ships that were docked in or near the East End around the dates of the killings. However, records of their crews were destroyed or lost, making it impossible to focus on one sailor. What he did find were reports of six prostitutes carved up, Ripper-style, in Nicaragua over 10 days in January 1889, just two months after the spree supposedly ended.

These were followed by a similar killing in London in February, one in the German port of Flensburg in October and another in London in July 1891.

A second new book, Uncle Jack by Tony Williams, proposes the killer was the author’s ancestor, John Williams ? a gynaecologist to Queen Victoria’s children.