Jack the Ripper Identified

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Edi
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Jack the Ripper Identified

Post by Edi »

Bonus: The scientist who did the work is a Finnish molecular geneticist.

Really long article in the Daily Mail

Metro UK
Identity of Jack The Ripper finally ‘revealed’ with the help of DNA evidence
Sunday 7 Sep 2014 11:14 am

DNA evidence has uncovered the identity of Jack The Ripper, and it’s none of the romantic suspects – such as the Queen’s surgeon Sir William Gull, or artist Walter Sickert.

The most infamous serial killer in history has been identified as a relatively underwhelming Polish madman called Aaron Kosminski, who was committed to a mental asylum at the height of the Ripper hysteria.

Kosminski was actually a suspect at the time of the murders, even named by Chief Inspector Donald Swanson in notes the policemen made, but as the myth and legend of the murders grew over more than 125 years, so too did the list of more fanciful suspects.

The breakthrough came when a scientist, using cutting-edge technology, matched DNA evidence on a shawl found at one of the crime scenes with descendants of Kosminski.

Dr Jari Louhelainen, a Finnish expert in historic DNA, was brought in to study a shawl found with Catherine Eddowes, the second-last ‘confirmed’ victim of the Ripper, whose body was discovered in Mitre Square on September 30.

The shawl – still retaining stains and genetic material from the fateful night almost 126 years ago – had been bought by businessman Russell Edwards, 48, at an auction in Bury St Edmunds in 2007.

In the Mail On Sunday, Dr Louhelainen is quoted as saying: ‘It has taken a great deal of hard work, using cutting-edge scientific techniques which would not have been possible five years ago.

‘Once I had the profile, I could compare it to that of the female descendant of Kosminski’s sister, who had given us a sample of her DNA swabbed from inside her mouth.

‘The first strand of DNA showed a 99.2 per cent match, as the analysis instrument could not determine the sequence of the missing 0.8 per cent fragment of DNA. On testing the second strand, we achieved a perfect 100 per cent match.’

Aaron Kosminski was born in the Polish town of Kłodawa, then part of the Russian Empire, in 1865. He emigrated to England with his family in 1881, moving to Whitechapel.

He set himself up as a hairdresser but it is clear that he was suffering psychological problems, with latter-day case notes saying he had been ill from 1885.

The murders attributed to Jack The Ripper began in 1888. Anywhere between five and 11 murders of women in and around the Whitechapel area have been linked to the Ripper.

The five relatively undisputed murders – of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly – happened between August 31 and November 9 1888. The 126th anniversary of Chapman’s murder is on Monday (September 8).

The police file on the murders also point to the mutilation deaths of Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie, the ‘Pinchin Street torso’ and Frances Coles – Coles being the last to die in February 1891.

In February 1891, Kosminski was forcibly put in Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, and he remained in asylums until his death in 1919, aged 53.

While it can be argued that it is hardly conclusive evidence that Kosminski was the Ripper (the DNA of a Whitechapel resident on the belongings of a known Whitechapel prostitute merely proves Kosminski met Eddowes at some point), it does put Kosminski closer to a Ripper victim than any other suspect in the century-old case.

Putting a typically Hollywood spin on the mystery, take another look at the positioning of the confirmed victims. Was Mr Kosminski trying to leave the most tantalising clue of all? Answer: almost certainly not.
Pretty incredible how it was possible after all this time and all the contradictory stuff out there muddying things.
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Re: Jack the Ripper Identified

Post by madd0ct0r »

I'd say a skin cell from inside his penis goes a little bit further then proving he 'met' her at one point, but meh.

also the mail must love this. history and a chance to blame the poles!
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Re: Jack the Ripper Identified

Post by Darth Holbytlan »

Just for amusement, I checked up on the big Jack the Ripper site, casebook.org to see what was being said there. The short version is that the connection of the scarf to the crime is dubious at best—the story that it came from the crime scene is a family tradition claiming that one Amos Simpson picked it up from the crime scene and kept it. But the log of items at Eddowes' crime scene didn't include the scarf, the log of officers at the scene didn't include Amos—in fact, he wasn't even in the right police department to be present, as it was a City police crime scene and he was Met police—and the scarf has been passed around unprotected from contamination for 125 years.

The scarf has even been tested before and not found to have DNA or bloodstains. Granted, the new tests are supposed to be more sensitive, but when the item has a lot of casual contamination risk that extra sensitivity may not be the best thing. But even then, the tests are Mitochondrial DNA tests, which only cut down the size of the suspect population by 10–1000 times—not that good when dealing with a suspect pool the size of late 19th century London.

Two interesting posts (one and two).
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Re: Jack the Ripper Identified

Post by Captain Seafort »

Darth Holbytlan wrote:*snip
So I take it that this irrefutable proof of the Ripper's identity is about as reliable as all the other times there's been irrefutable proof of the Ripper's identity?
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Re: Jack the Ripper Identified

Post by Channel72 »

I never understood the fascination with Jack. He wasn't some kind of supernatural demonic entity. He was obviously just some random loser psychotic idiot who had a thing for murdering prostitutes, like so many serial killers since. He's just lucky to have been active before modern forensics.
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Re: Jack the Ripper Identified

Post by Darth Holbytlan »

Captain Seafort wrote:So I take it that this irrefutable proof of the Ripper's identity is about as reliable as all the other times there's been irrefutable proof of the Ripper's identity?
Pretty much. Although I do give points to this one for at least using actual forensics. That puts it well ahead of most of these other Ripper theories, which tend towards hilariously stupid. (e.g. Person thinks this painter's work is creepy; he must be Jack the Ripper! Never mind that he was documented to not be in London during one of the murders; he must have set up a false alibi and snuck back in to London!)
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Re: Jack the Ripper Identified

Post by sarevok2 »

Channel72 wrote:I never understood the fascination with Jack. He wasn't some kind of supernatural demonic entity. He was obviously just some random loser psychotic idiot who had a thing for murdering prostitutes, like so many serial killers since. He's just lucky to have been active before modern forensics.
Being the first at anything counts for publicity. In case of Jack the Ripper he is the first sensational modern serial killer.
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Re: Jack the Ripper Identified

Post by Thanas »

sarevok2 wrote:
Channel72 wrote:I never understood the fascination with Jack. He wasn't some kind of supernatural demonic entity. He was obviously just some random loser psychotic idiot who had a thing for murdering prostitutes, like so many serial killers since. He's just lucky to have been active before modern forensics.
Being the first at anything counts for publicity. In case of Jack the Ripper he is the first sensational modern serial killer.
No. Not at all. There are dozen of serial killers which received widespread notice.

It is however the first huge serial killer in the Anglo world which got perpetuated for decades by novels and plays.
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Re: Jack the Ripper Identified

Post by Channel72 »

The funny thing about serial killers is what utter... um... pathetic losers they usually are, for lack of a better word, despite all the media glamor and mystique they receive. There's never been a truly "Hannibal Lecter"-esque, brilliant, sophisticated psychopath. Most actual serial killers were just like idiots, who managed to evade arrest for a while because random murders are, by definition, motiveless and therefore difficult to solve. People like Jeffery Dahmer weren't even smart, (in fact, Jeffery Dahmer in particular was so fucking stupid the cops one time actually caught him in the middle of trying to murder one of his victims, but then left the scene because of sheer stupidity/negligence), just temporarily lucky. I'm sure Jack the Ripper was probably similar.
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Re: Jack the Ripper Identified

Post by Zixinus »

The identity of the Ripper is a mostly blank slate. Nobody knows it and likely nobody will know it because the required evidence to conclusively prove it is lost in the midst of time. Therefore he is a convenient blank canvas for later writers to paint whatever they want on. Especially if you want to be fanciful in presentation of the Victorian era. Most people only hear about serial killers and the imagination has this weird connection of power and killing, thus making an imaginary shadow where the real person would have been nothing but pathetic.

Jack the Ripper has displays about him as tourist attractions for fuck's sake. It has become a self-perpetuating cycle and even if this catch turns out to be true somehow (there isn't much chance of that), then this won't kill the myth. Just put another unfortunate weirdo or mentally ill person on the big, imaginary lineup.
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Re: Jack the Ripper Identified

Post by Zaune »

And trust the fucking Daily Mail to blame it on a Polish immigrant.
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Re: Jack the Ripper Identified

Post by Darth Yan »

Channel72 wrote:The funny thing about serial killers is what utter... um... pathetic losers they usually are, for lack of a better word, despite all the media glamor and mystique they receive. There's never been a truly "Hannibal Lecter"-esque, brilliant, sophisticated psychopath. Most actual serial killers were just like idiots, who managed to evade arrest for a while because random murders are, by definition, motiveless and therefore difficult to solve. People like Jeffery Dahmer weren't even smart, (in fact, Jeffery Dahmer in particular was so fucking stupid the cops one time actually caught him in the middle of trying to murder one of his victims, but then left the scene because of sheer stupidity/negligence), just temporarily lucky. I'm sure Jack the Ripper was probably similar.
Yeah a lot of tv shows have this problem. Even the ones who were smart (Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy) usually made a mistake that allowed the police to nail them. Hell the BTK killer flat out admitted that he got cocky.

As stupid as it could get cold case did demolish the glamorous mystique by portraying killers as a.) so god damned monstrous no one would route for them or b.) fundementally pathetic (the guy who initially comes across as Hannibal Lector is later revealed to be motivated by the fact that he never moved on from one particularly traumatic event/a long period of abuse and is basically trying to replicate the one time he was ever in control, and once he's called out on it he pretty much becomes a screaming madman reduced to yelling at his nemesis to shut up)

Most killers in general are like this too; a lot of time murderers are petty idiots who kill for petty reasons (again, Monk demonstrated this when it turns out that the guy who orchestrated the murder of Monk's wife (something that the fans had been waiting 7 years to find out who and why) did so pretty much to hide the fact that he a.) had an affair with a student while married b.) had a child with said student and c.) murdered the only witness. When Monk points out that two people were murdered for such a petty reason the killer himself is literally unable to come up with a good comeback.)
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