DNA test has identified Jack the Ripper, claims author
Tests on a blood-stained shawl found at 1888 murder scene link it to a barber who died in an insane asylum and was already under suspicion
Jack the Ripper, one of the most notorious serial killers in history, has been identified through DNA traces found on a shawl, claims a sleuth in a book out today.
The true identity of Jack the Ripper, whose grisly murders terrorised the murky slums of Whitechapel in east London in 1888, has been a mystery ever since.
An interesting but remarkable claim that needs to be subjected to peer review
But after extracting DNA from a shawl recovered from the scene of one of the killings, which matched relatives of the victim and one of the suspects, Jack the Ripper sleuth Russell Edwards claims the identity of the murderer is now beyond doubt.
He says the killer was Aaron Kosminski, a Jewish emigre and barber from Poland. Kosminski was an early suspect who died in an insane asylum.
Edwards, a businessman interested in the Ripper story, bought the bloodstained Victorian shawl at auction in 2007.
The book says it came from the murder scene of the Ripper's fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes, on September 30, 1888.
Police acting sergeant Amos Simpson, who had been at the scene, got permission to take it for his dressmaker wife - who was aghast at the thought of using a bloodstained shawl.
It had since been passed down through the policeman's direct descendants, who stored it unwashed in a box. It spent a few years on loan to Scotland Yard's crime museum.
Edwards sought to find out if DNA technology could link the shawl to the murder scene.
Working on the blood stains, Doctor Jari Louhelainen, senior lecturer in molecular biology at Liverpool John Moores University, isolated seven small segments of mitochondrial DNA.
They were matched with the DNA of Karen Miller, a direct descendant of Eddowes, confirming her blood was on the shawl.
Meanwhile stains exposed under ultra-violet light suggested the presence of seminal fluid.
Doctor David Miller, reader in molecular andrology at the University of Leeds, found cells from which DNA was isolated.
With the help of genealogists, Edwards found a descendant of Kosminski who offered samples of her DNA. Louhelainen then matched DNA from the semen stains on the shawl to Kosminski's descendant.
Edwards says this places Kosminski at the murder scene.
Eddowes, 46, was killed on the same night as the Ripper's third victim. An orphan with a daughter and two sons, she worked as a casual prostitute.
She was found murdered at 1.45am. Her throat was cut and she was disembowelled. Her face was also mutilated.
The book claims the shawl was left at the crime scene by the killer, not Eddowes.
Kosminski was born in Klodawa in central 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.
Some reports say he was taken in by the police to be identified by a witness who had seen him with one of the victims, but the witness refused to give incriminating evidence, meaning the police had to release him.
He entered a workhouse in 1889, where he was described as destitute. He was discharged later that year but ended up in an insane asylum. He died from gangrene on March 24, 1919.
Some have cast doubt on Edwards' findings. The research has not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, so the claims cannot be verified or the methodology scrutinised.
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.
