Jack the Ripper’s identity has now apparently been revealed by an author named Russell Edwards who claims he has been able to establish the infamous serial killer’s identity from DNA evidence.
Edwards, who describes himself as an “armchair detective,” believes he has identified the Victorian serial murderer for the first time, as reported by the Independent in Britain.
According to Edwards, Jack the Ripper was a 23-year-old Polish-Jewish barber by the name of Aaron Kosminski who carried out a spree of gruesome murders in the Whitechapel district of London in 1888.
Reportedly, a shawl belonging to Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper’s victims, was used as the basis for the DNA research as it still retained some stains and genetic material from the fateful night of the murder 126 years ago.
Edwards purchased the shawl at an auction in Bury St Edmunds back in 2007. It was allegedly taken from the scene by acting Sergeant Amos Simpson, who was on duty the night of Eddowes’s death and wanted it for his wife.
Edwards revealed some details to reporters .
“I’ve got the only piece of forensic evidence in the whole history of the case. I’ve spent 14 years working on it, and we have definitively solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was. Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt. This is it now – we have unmasked him.”
Jack the Ripper murdered at least five women, slashing their throats, removing internal organs, and leaving their bodies on the streets of London.
The Mail on Sunday reported that Edwards worked closely with a Dr. Jari Louhelainen, an expert in molecular biology, who revealed the extent of his research.
“It has taken a great deal of hard work, using cutting-edge scientific techniques which would not have been possible five years ago. Once I had the profile, I could compare it to that of the female descendant of Kosminski’s sister, who had given us a sample of her DNA swabbed from inside her mouth. The first strand of DNA showed a 99.2 per cent match, as the analysis instrument could not determine the sequence of the missing 0.8 per cent fragment of DNA. On testing the second strand, we achieved a perfect 100 per cent match.”
At the time of the brutal murders back in 1888, Kosminski was identified as a suspect and duly questioned by the police, but there was never enough evidence to bring him to trial.
Assistant Chief Constable Sir Melville Macnaghten, who dealt with the investigation and spoke with Kosminski, wrote afterwards in the case notes that he was “a lower-class Polish Jew and had family living in Whitechapel . He had a great hatred of women… with strong homicidal tendencies.”