Author says DNA tests solve Ripper mystery
Print Edition
JACK the Ripper, one of the most notorious serial killers in history, has been identified through DNA traces found on a shawl, a new book, “Naming Jack the Ripper,” claims.
The true identity of the man whose grisly murders terrorized the murky slums of Whitechapel in east London in 1888 has been a mystery ever since, with dozens of suspects that include royalty and prime ministers down to bootmakers.
But after extracting DNA from a shawl recovered from the scene of one of the killings, which matched relatives of both the victim and one of the suspects, Ripper sleuth Russell Edwards claims the identity of the murderer is now beyond doubt.
He says the infamous killer is Aaron Kosminski, a Jewish emigre from Poland, who worked as a barber.
Edwards bought the bloodstained Victorian shawl at auction in 2007.
It is said to have come the murder scene of the Ripper’s fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes, on September 30, 1888.
A police officer took it home for his dressmaker wife, but she was aghast at the thought of using a bloodstained shawl and it had since passed down, unwashed in a box, through the officer’s direct descendants.
Working on the blood stains, Jari Louhelainen, a senior lecturer in molecular biology at Liverpool John Moores University, isolated segments of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through the female line.
They were matched with the DNA of Karen Miller, a descendant of Eddowes, confirming her blood was on the shawl.
Meanwhile, Edwards found a descendant of Kosminski through the female line and Louhelainen was able to match DNA from semen stains on the shawl with the descendant.
Eddowes, 46, a casual prostitute, was found brutally murdered at 1:45am. Her throat was cut and she was disembowelled. Her face was also mutilated.
Kosminski was born in Klodawa in Poland on September 11, 1865. His family fled the imperial Russian anti-Jewish pogroms and emigrated to east London in the early 1880s. He lived close to the murder scenes.
Refused to give evidence
Some reports say he was taken in by the police after he was seen with one of the victims but a witness refused to give evidence, and he was released.
He died in an asylum in 1919.
Some have cast doubt on Edwards’ findings.
Professor Alec Jeffreys, who invented the DNA fingerprinting technique 30 years ago this week, called for further verification.
“An interesting but remarkable claim that needs to be subjected to peer review, with detailed analysis of the provenance of the shawl and the nature of the claimed DNA match with the perpetrator’s descendants and its power of discrimination; no actual evidence has yet been provided,” Jeffreys said.
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