Posted on 09/07/2014 8:44:28 PM PDT by lbryce
THE search to uncover the identity of Jack the Ripper appears to be over.
DNA on a shawl found near one of the victims, Catherine Eddowes, reportedly contains a match to both her and one of the chief suspects, Aaron Kosminsky.
The Polish hairdresser, who moved to England with his family in 1881, was committed to a mental asylum at the peak of Ripper hysteria.
Is this Jack the Ripper? Revealed? ... DNA evidence reportedly confirms that Aaron Kosminski is Jack the Ripper. Picture: Supplied The breakthrough came when Dr Jari Louhelainen, an expert in historic DNA, was commissioned to study a shawl found with Eddowes, the second-last “confirmed” victim of the Ripper more than 125 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytelegraph.com.au ...
A marvel of money.
Oprah's DNA test proved that she was the descendent of a Zulu Princess Warrior named Sha-Kah-Kahn.
A quick search shows only 5 “for sure” victims!? I would have thought more. From wiki:
“The large number of attacks against women in the East End during this era adds uncertainty to how many victims were killed by the same person.[7] Eleven separate murders, stretching from 3 April 1888 to 13 February 1891, were included in a London Metropolitan Police Service investigation, and were known collectively in the police docket as the “Whitechapel murders”.[8][9] Opinions vary as to whether these murders should be linked to the same culprit, but five of the eleven Whitechapel murders, known as the “canonical five”, are widely believed to be the work of the Ripper.[10]”
The article you referenced said this Polish guy was committed to the asylum in 1891 - interesting that the last murder that may be related is in Feb. 1891.
Where did the shawl come from, do you know ?
Thanks for the informative posts.
Going on with my wonderment in the 5 deaths (up to 11?) - why is the “Jack the Ripper” story so famous? I’m trying to remember some of the other infamous, and more recent mass murder cases and vaugely remember names (Zodiac Killer, Son of Sam, Wayne Gacy) and I think they killed far more. But don’t “get the press”.
Perhaps because the Ripper case was never solved?
Better (and more entertainment) in the newspapers back then?
“First” well know mass murder?
He was a Jew. Most of the Eastern European immigrants in the Whitechapel district of London at the time were Jews fleeing pogroms in Europe. It also happens that the eye witness who "identified" him (another very generous description given the process actually used to ID Kosminski while he was locked up in Colney Hatch) was also a Jew.
Given the hysteria that the Whitechapel murders raised against Jews, especially after one of the so-called Ripper messages, and the horrific and controversial murder of Miriam Angel by Israel Lipski shortly before the Whitechapel murders, Jews were especially cooperative with the police. Contrast that with the attitude of "immigrants" in the Barrios of "Sanctuary Cities" in modern America.
Jury is still out, sorry.
11 murders over 5 years. In the midst of redlight and high crime districts in bloody ole England. Compared to this day and age that number seems really low.
Yes, Frances Coles, mentioned in the article, was not one of the canonical five [For whatever that’s worth. The police did not believe there were only five murders at the time.] Coles was murdered after Kosminski was already locked up in the Colney Hatch Asylum. Kosminiski could not have been her killer.
Zodiac is similar, I think, in the public mind for many of the same reasons. Zodiac has seven definite victims. Five possible others. Not a large number in the annals of serial murder. He wrote messages, including encrypted texts, one of which [The Zodiac 340 Cipher] has never been decrypted. There were several "strong" suspects. The murders stopped -- maybe because the suspect was being watched, maybe because he was in prison. And of course, the key element: the case has never been solved.
You’re probably thinking of Patricia Cornwell. Her “solution” to the Whitechapel murders was one of the most poorly argued theories ever advanced. No serious Ripperologists thought her book was anything but crap.
Quite right Mr Ramsbotham. There is absolutely nothing conclusive about this.
In my eyes, the shawl has an appalling provenance. It is only oral tradition that it was allegedly ‘taken home’ by a police constable (Amos Simpson). How likely is this? The material is nearly 8 feet long! Not something you could just tuck under your tunic. Also, the Eddowes case was handled by the City Police, while Simpson was a member of the Metropolitan Police. It was not his turf. Why was he there in the first place?
As others have stated, the police (City Police, remember) made no mention of any shawl in their reports.
To say nothing of the fact that the shawl has had plenty of years to be ‘contaminated’. Someone even suggested that it was put on view publicly at a Jack The Ripper convention in 2007 - and was actually in the same room as two of Eddowe’s descendants!
I don’t believe this was Eddowe’s shawl at all.
I think Jack still eludes his hunters.
I want it to be solved, but there have been so many false leads. I'll wait for more information.
How about this: The promoter of this theory, tracked down living descendants of the murdered victims, extracted DNA from them, put it on the shawl. Then tested the shawl for DNA. Amazingly, it matched the DNA of the descendants of the two murdered victims! Game over! Game over!
A while back, someone found artifacts (boots, watch) belonging to Amelia Earhart on an atoll. What was there not to believe? The artifacts looked just like the ones in photos of her before the flight and the atoll was close to where she was last heard from. The finder’s book had all the details....
This evidence looks very good, but of course should be substantiated.
The suspect if not a new one: he has been ranked about the first most likely, even at the time of the police investigations. He also fits a profile: violent, woman-hater, schizophrenic.
As for his being an immigrant, this would be a secondary but interesting aspect. Immigrants typically are over-represented in criminal activity, and this goes even for major immigrant groups in the United States. The Irish, as newcomers, were most of the criminals in their time, followed by Italians. We tend to take a rosy picture of immigrants because some of our early immigrants were unusual: the New Englanders of the Great Migration were not coming here because they were losers economically back in England. In fact, many were what we would call middle class, such that they had to learn farming and fishing when they got here. Many of the Virginia settlers were upper-class to begin with: if not already personally wealthy, they came from successful families, and had connections even sometimes with aristocracy. This was not the “wretched refuse” period if immigration. Except maybe in the case of Georgia.
Having said that, we cannot judge groups by schizophrenic individuals, who are clearly outliers in any population.
If the recent DNA test had come up with a completely new suspect, and an unexpected, improbable one — one would naturally be more suspicious. But this new evidence applies to the prime suspect of the police at the time. It is not what a fraudster would be most likely to contrive, if selling books were the main aim of a conspiracy. But if you had worked on this case for well over a decade, of course you would want to write it up somewhere.
There is a Wikipedia article on the suspect. Quite a bit is known about him, and there are living relatives.
I'd be more impressed if they were able to link his DNA to several of the victims.
Johns and prostitutes are going to share DNA and the presence of it is not indicative of the last person to see that woman (it was on her shawl, not inside her woowoo). However, if he turned up in the company of several of the women, that is an "unlikely" coincidence (as was the DC gay muslim sniper duo just HAPPENING to pass through several of the roadblocks set up following the then unsolved shootings, but then they didn't match the profile so they were allowed to continue their deeds).
“I say that one match is not proof he was Jack The Ripper.
If his DNA had been found on more than one of the victims, then it could be considered proof.
“
What if there was only one victim? Do we say this is not proof until we have another victim?
A whole bunch, for sure, ranging from good suspects to ridiculous ones. This does seem to move Kosminski to the top of the list.
True. However, isn't that true even today? Most serial killers are usually convicted on a handful of murders for which the evidence is the strongest. The conviction is then leveraged to attempt to get the serial killer to confess to the others in exchange for something, usually foregoing execution.
Isn't true that all complicated criminal investigations have loose ends? Even when there are convictions, there are things that don't quite fit the accepted theory and can't be very well explained. The world of criminal investigations is not a tidy little world where everything fits together nicely.
Someone else raised the possibility of a hoax. That is a possibility, too. It seems odd that this cloak wouldn't have been laundered.
Assuming the new evidence is valid and despite the points you raise, it does seem to make Kosminski the prime suspect. I'm sure that we'll be hearing all about weaknesses in the evidence and conclusions in the weeks to come. There are a lot of Ripperologists out there who have vested interests in their pet theory and will see this as a threat and attack it.
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