Jack the Ripper identified through DNA traces: sleuth

[Earthnut]

https://news.yahoo.com/jack-ripper-identified-dna-traces-sleuth-024421946.html

(With Video)

Jack the Ripper identified through DNA traces: sleuth

AFP By Robin Millard

Image ~

Dr Jari Louhelainen, senior lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University, testing a shawl that was taken from the murder scene of Jack the Ripper's fourth victim Catherine Eddowes on September 30, 1888 (AFP Photo/)

Article ~

" London (AFP) - 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 on Tuesday.

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, with dozens of suspects that include royalty and prime ministers down to bootmakers.

But after extracting DNA from a shawl recovered from the scene of one of the killings, which matched relatives of both 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 infamous killer is Aaron Kosminski, a Jewish emigre from Poland, who worked as a barber.

Edwards, a businessman interested in the Ripper story, bought a bloodstained Victorian shawl at auction in 2007.

The story goes that 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 from his superiors to take it for his dressmaker wife -- who was subsequently aghast at the thought of using a bloodstained shawl.

It had hitherto been passed down through the policeman's direct descendants, who had stored it unwashed in a box. It briefly spent a few years on loan to Scotland Yard's crime museum.

- Victim disembowelled -

Edwards sought to find out if DNA technology could conclusively link the shawl to the murder scene.

Working on the blood stains, Doctor Jari Louhelainen, senior lecturer in molecular at Liverpool John Moores University, isolated seven small segments of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through the female line.

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, managed to find cells from which DNA was isolated.

With the help of genealogists, Edwards found a descendant of Kosminski through the female line, who offered samples of her DNA.

Louhelainen was then able to match DNA from the semen stains to Kosminski's descendant.

For Edwards, this places Kosminski at the scene of Eddowes' gruesome murder.

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 brutally murdered at 1:45am. Her throat was cut and she was disembowelled. Her face was also mutilated.

The belief is that the shawl was left at the crime scene by the killer, not Eddowes.

- Calls for peer review -

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, and though a positive identification was made, the witness refused to give incriminating evidence, meaning the police had little option but to release him.

He entered a workhouse in 1889, where he was described on admission as "destitute". He was discharged later that year but soon ended up in an insane asylum.

He died from gangrene in an asylum on March 24, 1919 and was buried three days later at East Ham Cemetery in east London.

Some have cast doubt on Edwards' findings.

The research has not been published a a peer-reviewed scientific journal, meaning the claims cannot be independently 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 told The Independent newspaper. "

[Walkabout]

considering how many have touch, breathed or other wised come in contact with the source, I will remain a Doubting Thomas.

[Earthnut]

considering how many have touch, breathed or other wised come in contact with the source, I will remain a Doubting Thomas.

Yeah, I know what you mean. At least we know by know he is dead and gone. But, as usual, sad to say, there will always be someone else to take his place, and there have been many.

[WilliamSchindler]

considering how many have touch, breathed or other wised come in contact with the source, I will remain a Doubting Thomas.

Thats true, but im sure there are not so much people who jerked off on it... Cause the article says, that they found seminal fluid.

But it really seems pretty vague. I dont think that on can be sure after all this time.

[seesthru]

They found semen on her shawl they say. They multiplied the DNA to a large enough sequence to test against descendants. John Douglas and others profiled the unsub and the Barber matched the profile. The other suspects were not nearly as viable a suspect. It's safe to say that Douglas is pretty happy they finally did dna! He was on a panel on TV about it years ago.

I never really did much with that. All involved were long since dead, and I focus more on studying the active cases, hoping they catch the bad man.

[Earthnut]

There was a discussion one time in a Criminal Minds episode, after a case was solved, about serial killers, and/or bad guys/gals. They said that they catch or kill one, and another one pops up, that it's a never-ending search.

[Earthnut]

https://news.yahoo.com/did-australian-teacher-solve-mystery-jack-ripper-181909964.html

Did an Australian teacher solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper?

In his new book, Richard Patterson proposes that the notorious serial killer was a poet. But dozens of suspects have been proposed since the gruesome murders in 1888, and the case remains unsolved.

Christian Science Monitor By Cathaleen Chen

Notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper's real identity has been ardently debated for well over a century. Now, an Australian teacher says that he may have solved the mystery: It was writer Francis Thompson who committed the heinous crimes, he claims.

In 1885, before he became a well-known poet, Dr. Thompson moved to London with dreams of being a famous writer. Three years later, the five women were found gruesomely murdered in the Whitechapel district of London’s East End.

About 100 years after that, literature student Richard Patterson came across Thompson’s poetry. Upon discovering that the "The Hound of Heaven" poet had also been a medical doctor, Mr. Patterson became convinced that Thompson was Jack the Ripper.

An English teacher in Byron Bay, Australia, Patterson has been researching the topic for 20 years. In his forthcoming book, "Francis Thompson – A Ripper Suspect," he presents evidence implicating the British poet.

"I'm grateful to have played some part in helping people understand Thompson, and why he might have been the Ripper," Patterson told Mercury Press.

During Thompson’s years in London, he became addicted to opium. As Patterson tells the story, the young writer was homeless in Whitechapel until a prostitute offered him lodgings. Though he never revealed her identity, their friendship is believed to have turned into Thompson’s only romantic relationship. But as he slowly gained recognition in the literature world, she disappeared.

This is when Thompson had a mental breakdown, Patterson said.

"The moment he told her he was finally published, she said she was leaving him because the public would not understand their relationship. This was after Thompson's year-long romance with the woman,” Patterson said.

Before and after the murders, the author explained, Thompson wrote about stabbing female prostitutes.

"Thompson kept a dissecting knife under his coat, and he was taught a rare surgical procedure that was found in the mutilations of more than one of the Ripper victims,” Patterson said.

The case was officially closed in 1892, 15 years before Thompson's death at age 47. 

But the investigations never truly ended. Scholars and sleuths have obsessed over the mystery through the years, producing up to a hundred different suspects and transforming "Ripperology" into a global phenomenon.

Some Ripperologists believe the murderer was a woman. Some say he was painter Walter Sickert, or writer Lewis Carroll. Some propose that he was a butcher, or a famous surgeon, or just a man with profound mommy issues. In London, tourists can take a dozen competing Jack the Ripper walking tours. A search for "Jack the Ripper" on Amazon fetches more than 4,700 books.

But what exactly is the murderer's popular appeal? What is the importance of solving 127-year-old crimes?

The grisly and sexualized nature of the murders make for a salacious and riveting story, but gender historian Julia Laite argues that the real appeal lies in the lives of the victims: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Mary Kelly, and Catherine Eddowes.

Most of them are believed to have been sex workers, and in studying their lives, Ripperologists have become pseudo-anthropologists, discovering overlooked cultural information about poor and working-class women of the Victorian era.

"Jack killed flower sellers. Jack killed charwomen. He killed mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives," Ms. Laite writes in the Guardian. "These women are infinitely more interesting to me than the identity of their killer. Finding out about their poverty, their work and their experiences of injustice and inequality is far more important than their killer’s DNA."