A Forensic Scientist Claims To Have Finally Identified Jack The Ripper
BuzzFeed - Latest 2014-09-07
Summary:
The Mail on Sunday reports DNA testing shows Polish hairdresser Aaron Kosminski was the killer.
The Mail on Sunday today reports that Aaron Kosminski, a Polish Jew who fled to London in the 1880s, was Jack the Ripper.
An imagined portrait of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, circa 1890.
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
Russell Edwards, 48, describes how he bought a shawl, found by the body of the Ripper's fourth victim Catherine Eddowes, at an auction house in Bury St Edmunds. He writes in the paper: "There was no evidence for its provenance, although after the auction I obtained a letter from its previous owner who claimed his ancestor had been a police officer present at the murder scene and had taken it from there."
A composite of three Scotland Yard issued photographs of serial killer Jack The Ripper's female victims, all killed between August and September 1888 L-R: Annie Chapman, Mary Ann Nicholls and Elizabeth Stride.
PA Archive/Press Association Images PA
He apparently handed the shawl on to Dr Jari Louhelainen, a senior lecturer in molecular biology at Liverpool John Moores University. Edwards says that Louhelainen proved that the shawl was genuine by tracing a descendent of Catherine Eddowes, who agreed to provide a DNA sample.