Does a new genetic analysis finally reveal the identity of Jack the Ripper?
killer who terrorized the streets of London more than a century ago.
The results come from a forensic examination of a
stained silk shawl
that investigators said was found next to the mutilated body of
Catherine Eddowes, the killer’s fourth victim, in 1888. The shawl is
speckled with what is claimed to be blood and semen, the latter
believed to be from the killer. Four other women in London were
also murdered in a 3-month spree and the culprit has never been confirmed.
This isn’t the first time Kosminski has been linked to the crimes. But it is
the first time the supporting DNA evidence has been published in a
peer-reviewed journal. The first genetic tests on shawl samples were
conducted several years ago by Jari Louhelainen, a biochemist at
Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom, but he
said he wanted to wait for the fuss to die down before he submitted the
results. Author Russell Edwards, who bought the shawl in 2007 and
gave it to Louhelainen, used the unpublished results of the tests to
identify Kosminski as the murderer in a 2014 book called Naming Jack
the Ripper. But geneticists complained at the time that it was impossible
to assess the claims because few technical details about the analysis of
genetic samples from the shawl were available. Science.
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