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Jul 16, 2023 · A former police volunteer has unearthed new medical evidence she believes identifies Jack the Ripper, the 19th-century serial killer responsible for some of the UK’s most infamous and unsolved ...
- Matt Mathers
- 1 min
- Overview
- Who Was Jack the Ripper?
- Did DNA Analysis Find the Killer?
- ‘Ripperologists’ Weigh In
A book author claims to have solved one of history’s coldest cases and unmasked the identity of Jack the Ripper.
Jack the Ripper
In the early morning hours of September 30, 1888, police discovered the mutilated body of Catherine Eddowes, her throat slit and left kidney removed, in London’s Mitre Square. Eddowes had been the second prostitute inside of an hour found murdered in that section of the city, and the slaying bore the grisly signatures of the serial killer who for weeks had been terrorizing London’s East End—Jack the Ripper.
As police from Scotland Yard completed their work, Acting Sergeant Amos Simpson reportedly made an odd request to take home a blood-splattered shawl—blue and dark brown with a pattern of Michaelmas daisies at either end—found at the crime scene as a gift for his seamstress wife. His superiors granted permission, but unsurprisingly, the present was not well received.
The slayings never faded from public consciousness, however. Legions of “Ripperologists” have developed their own theories over the decades, and the lineup of possible suspects has included the father of Winston Churchill, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” author Lewis Carroll, and Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen Victoria and second in line to the British throne.
Some have even speculated that Jack the Ripper was in actuality Jill the Ripper, and female suspects include Mary Pearcey, who was executed in 1890 after butchering her lover’s wife and child with a carving knife in a similar manner to the notorious serial killer.
Now, after more than three years of scientific analysis, Russell says that Jack the Ripper’s true identity has been found interwoven in the ragged, 126-year-old shawl, and he fingers Polish immigrant Aaron Kosminski as the serial killer in his book “Naming Jack the Ripper.”
Edwards enlisted forensic geneticist Dr. Jari Louhelainen of Liverpool John Moores University in 2011 to study the shawl using a level of analysis that was only possible in the last decade. Louhelainen identified the dark splotches on the shawl as stains “consistent with arterial blood spatter caused by slashing.” He also discovered evidence of split body parts, consistent with a kidney removal, as well as the presence of seminal fluid.
Louhelainen found the mitochondrial DNA taken from the shawl matched that taken from Karen Miller, a direct descendant of Eddowes, as well as a female descendant of Kosminski’s sister, Matilda, who provided swabs of mitochondrial DNA from the inside of her mouth.
Police who worked the case at the time of the murders would not have been surprised to see Kosminski’s name linked to the crime. At the time of the murders, Kosminski was among the handful of primary suspects. The youngest of seven children, Kosminski was born in Klodawa, Poland, in 1865. After the death of his father, the family fled the pogroms flamed by Poland’s Russians rulers and immigrated to London’s Whitechapel section in 1881.
Likely a paranoid schizophrenic, Kosminski, whose occupation was listed as hairdresser, was admitted into an asylum in 1891 after attacking his sister with a knife. In the mid-1890s, a witness identified him as the person attacking one of the victims but refused to testify. Lacking any hard evidence, police never arrested Kosminski for the crimes. He remained institutionalized until his death in 1919 from gangrene.
Edwards has long theorized that the shawl was of too fine a quality to have been worn by a London prostitute and belonged to Jack the Ripper, not Eddowes. Using nuclear magnetic resonance, another Liverpool John Moores University scientist, Dr. Fyaz Ismail, determined that the fabric’s age predated the 1888 murders and was likely made near St. Petersburg, Russia. The region of Poland where Kosminski was born was under Russian control, and it would not have been unusual for Russian goods to have been traded there.
Many Ripperologists, however, are not so certain. The report has generated plenty of skeptics, some of whom have noted that the laboratory analysis has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal and that Louhelainen was only able to test mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down from mothers to children and offers much less of a unique identifier than nuclear DNA. Many people can share similar mitochondrial DNA signatures.
Other critics refute the notion that Simpson was even at the crime scene the night of the Eddowes murder and note that the shawl may have been contaminated over the decades since it has been held by many members of the Eddowes family.
In addition, this is not the first time that DNA evidence has supposedly cracked the case. American crime novelist Patricia Cornwell asserted that DNA samples found on the taunting letters sent by Jack the Ripper to Scotland Yard matched those of post-Impressionist painter Walter Sickert.
And a 2006 study by Australian scientist Ian Findlay extracted DNA from the saliva on the letters and determined that it was likely that the sender was a woman. So even with the latest news, it’s unlikely the debate on Jack the Ripper’s identity will suddenly abate.
- 3 min
Oct 6, 2015 · How one man revealed Jack the Ripper's identity: the full story After stumbling across a new lead, Bruce Robinson became obsessed by a mystery that has confounded criminologists for a century.
Mar 15, 2019 · Forensic scientists say they have finally fingered the identity of Jack the Ripper, the notorious serial killer who terrorized the streets of London more than a century ago. Genetic tests published this week point to Aaron Kosminski, a 23-year-old Polish barber and a prime police suspect at the time. But critics say the evidence isn't strong ...
Jul 16, 2023 · Jack the Ripper's identity 'revealed' by newly discovered medical records ... “This is a well-researched, well-written, and long-needed book-length examination of a likely suspect. If you have ...
- Dalya Alberge
Oct 17, 2023 · Edwards presents his case that DNA analysis finally revealed the true identity of Jack the Ripper, shedding new light on the myth and mystery surrounding the infamous killer. If you are interested in learning more about Aaron Kosminiski, this book is worth checking out.
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Sep 10, 2019 · The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. Though most books about Jack the Ripper focus on the identity of the notorious killer himself, The Five by Hallie Rubenhold focuses on the lives of the Ripper’s five victims. This revisionist work challenges the commonly held belief that the canonical five were merely sex ...
