The unsolved mysterious murders of women in London in 1888 have spawned some of the most bizarre theories over the years. Called 'Jack, the Ripper', the serial killer reportedly targeted impoverished areas in and around Whitechapel in East London, slaying prostitutes and pulling off their organs.
So has the 126-year-old case with an array of over 100 suspects, theories and speculations finally been put to rest? A businessman Russell Edwards along with Dr Jari Louhelainen, a Finnish genetic expert, believe they have matched DNA evidence on a shawl found at one of the crime scenes with descendants of Aaron Kosminski, who was one of the suspects.
'Jack the Ripper' was most identified with the 'canonical five' cases, which consisted of five serial murders of women in a particular pattern. The victims were Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, all of whose throats had been slit and bodies mutilated. Dr Louhelainen reportedly studied a shawl found on Catherine Eddowes, the second-last ‘confirmed’ victim of the Ripper, whose body was discovered in Mitre Square on September 30, 1888.
The six major suspects whose names came up throughout the case were Seweryn Antonowicz Klosowski alias George Chapman (a barber), Aaron Kosminski (a hairdresser), Michael Ostrog (a surgeon), John Pizer (a shoemaker), James Thomas Sadler and Francis Tumblety (an 'Indian herb' doctor). Out of these, the DNA evidence reportedly gave a 100% match with Aaron Kominski. Strands from the blood stains on the shawl was matched against ancestors of both Eddowes and Kominski to find proof of the mitochondrian similarity.
Aaron Kosminski was born in the Polish town of Klodawa, then part of the Russian Empire, in 1865. He emigrated to England with his family in 1881, moving to Whitechapel. He was reportedly suffering from psychological problems in the form of hallucinations and was later kept in an asylum.
In an interview with Daily Mail, Dr Louhelainen said, "When Russell Edwards first approached me in 2011, I wasn’t aware of the massive levels of interest in the Ripper case, as I’m a scientist originally from Finland. To extract DNA samples from the stains on the shawl, I used a technique I developed myself, which I call ‘vacuuming’ – to pull the original genetic material from the depths of the cloth." He also added that because of the genome amplification technique that copies the DNA 500-million fold, he was also able to ascertain the ethnic and geographical background of the DNA he had extracted.
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