The Real Story Of Jack The Ripper

Forensic experts have identified Jack the Ripper, the London serial murderer who haunted the streets over a century ago. Aaron Kosminski, a 23-year-old Polish barber and key police suspect, was identified by genetic testing this week. However, detractors argue that the evidence is insufficient to conclude this case.

A soiled silk shawl recovered close to the mangled remains of Catherine Eddowes, the killer's fourth victim, in 1888 was forensically examined. According to reports, the shawl has blood and killer semen. Four more London women were slain in a three-month rampage, but the perpetrator remains unknown.

Kosminski has been tied to crimes before. However, this is the first peer-reviewed publication of the DNA evidence. Biochemist Jari Louhelainen of Liverpool John Moores University in the UK performed the first genetic testing on shawl samples some years ago, but he wanted to wait until the controversy subsided before submitting the findings. In Naming Jack the Ripper (2014), Russell Edwards, who acquired the shawl in 2007 and provided it to Louhelainen, utilized the unpublished test findings to identify Kosminski as the killer. However, geneticists noted that insufficient technical data regarding the study of DNA material from the shawl made it difficult to evaluate the claims.

The new study outlines them, somewhat. In "the most systematic and most advanced genetic analysis to date regarding the Jack the Ripper murders," Louhelainen and his colleague David Miller, a reproduction and sperm expert at Leeds University, extract and amplify the shawl's DNA. The testing matched mitochondrial DNA fragments from the shawl to those from Eddowes and Kosminski's surviving relatives. The Journal of Forensic Sciences concludes that Kosminki's DNA matches a living relative.

The study reveals the murderer had brown hair and eyes, supporting eyewitness testimony. "These characteristics are surely not unique," the paper's authors concede. The experts say blue eyes are becoming more frequent than brown in England.

The outcomes may disappoint critics. The research lacks specifics on the genetic variations detected and compared between DNA samples. Instead, the writers use colorful boxes to illustrate them. They believe the shawl and current DNA sequences matched where the boxes overlap.

According to their study, the Data Protection Act, a U.K. legislation protecting privacy, prevents them from disclosing Eddowes and Kosminski's live relatives' DNA sequences. The paper's visual is simpler for nonscientists, particularly "those interested in true crime."

A forensic scientist at the Institute of Legal Medicine at Innsbruck Medical University in Austria, Walther Parson, argues mitochondrial DNA sequences pose no privacy danger and should have been disclosed in the publication. "Otherwise the reader cannot evaluate the outcome. I wonder where science and research will go if we provide colorful boxes instead of outcomes."

Innsbruck mitochondrial DNA specialist Hansi Weissensteiner also disputes the study, which can only prove that two DNA samples are unrelated. "Based on mitochondrial DNA one can only exclude a suspect." The shawl's mitochondrial DNA may have originated from Kosminski or thousands other Londoners at the time.

Critics of the Kosminsky hypothesis say there's no proof the shawl was at the murder site. They think it may have contaminated over time.

These DNA tests are not the first to identify Jack the Ripper. U.S. crime novelist Patricia Cornwell invited experts to examine DNA from serial murderer letters to police some years ago. She identified the murderer as Walter Sickert, a painter, based on DNA research and other facts, although many experts think the letters were phony. Another DNA study of the letters suggested a female killer.

References

https://www.science.org/content/article/does-new-genetic-analysis-finally-reveal-identity-jack-ripper