A world-renowned DNA expert claims to have finally worked out who the true identity of Jack the Ripper and says the serial killer was a 23-year-old Polish immigrant named Aaron Kosminski, reports The Mirror.
Dr. Jari Louhelainen made the claim after taking DNA samples from a bloody shawl of one of the notorious London killer's victims, Catherine Eddowes. The claim is made in a new book, Naming Jack the Ripper, by author Russell Edwards.
The shawl had been taken by acting Sergeant Amos Simpson, who was on duty the night of Eddowes's death and wanted it for his wife. But horrified at the blood-soaked wrap, she never wore it, and it was stored away and passed down through the generations until it came to auction seven years ago.
Mr Edwards said: "Thank God the shawl has never been washed, as it held the vital evidence."
Louhelainen compared the DNA from Kosminski to relatives and said the man who emigrated from Poland, who ended up in an insane asylum, was the notorious killer. He died in an asylum in 1899, The Mirror reports.
This is not the same solution reached by Patricia Cornwall in her 2002 nonfiction (?) book, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper -- Case Closed. Ms. Cornwell presented the case for Walter Sickert, a British artist. Critics of her book noted that Sickert had been proposed in earlier works, none of which were acknowledged by Ms. Cornwell. The implication being that perhaps she was Jack-the-Ripping off someone else's work?
I remember reading another 'we solved it" book that it was another fellow rather. The evidence was based upon Jack's drawing in a letter to the authorities which matches a cartoon he drew in a register book when on holiday.
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