Jack the Ripper ID'd through DNA, author says
A new book claims to have solved the infamous case of Jack the Ripper, believed to have brutally killed at least five women in London in the late 1880s.
A shawl thought to belong to one of the victims, Catherine Eddows, was found to not only have her DNA, but the DNA of one of the prime suspects, according to Naming Jack the Ripper (Globe Pequot Press), by Russell Edwards.
The perp, according to Edwards, was hairdresser Aaron Kosminski, a Polish immigrant who died a decade later in an insane asylum.
"I am 100 percent certain," Edwards told a British TV reporter.
An in-depth rundown online of Edwards' case was published by the Daily Mail, which offered a video of the shawl being tested and the author discussing the case.
The idea conflicts with the conclusions of Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper -- Case Closed, by best-selling crime writer and former medical examiner Patricia Cornwell. She built a case against British painter Walter Sickert, arguing, for example, that his painting about one murder showed knowledge only the murderer could have. She, too, presented DNA evidence, which suggested Sickert wrote taunting letters to the media and police about the crimes.
Ripperologists, as students of the case have been dubbed, have voiced disagreements that any theory has been proved.
"The shawl has been openly handled by loads of people and been touched, breathed on, spat upon," Richard Cobb, who runs Jack the Ripper conventions and tours, told the Times of London. "My DNA is probably on there. What's more, Kosminski is likely to have frequented prostitutes in the East End of London. ... If I examined that shawl, I'd probably find links to 150 other men from the area." (The full article is available through the Australian.)
Edwards admits he's a bit of an amateur detective who got interested in the case after watching From Hell, a Johnny Depp movie about the Jack the Ripper.
As for the Sickert theory, writing hoax letters doesn't prove he was the killer, he might have picked up details about the case from French publications, and codes and symbols seen in paintings are subject to a variety of interpretations, according to a summary by Stephen P. Ryder.
Sickert was told once by a landlady she rented the same room to the serial killer, and he created a painting titled Jack the Ripper's Bedroom. A 1976 book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution suggested Sickert has coerced into being the Ripper's accomplice.
Maybe the next theory will be that Kosminski was the killer, but made Sickert write the letters.
Contact staff writer Peter Mucha at 215-854-4342 or pmucha@phillynews.com. Follow @petemucha on Twitter.