Self-described “armchair detective” Russell Edwards says he has discovered the identity of Jack the Ripper: It was 23 year-old Polish immigrant Aaron Kosminski, who died in an asylum after killing at least five women in London in 1888, according to Edwards.
From the Guardian:
In 2007 [Edwards] saw a shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper’s victims, was up for sale.
He bought it, and enlisted the help of Jari Louhelainen, an expert in molecular biology, who used pioneering techniques to find DNA from her blood and that of the killer.
Edwards, whose book Naming Jack the Ripper comes out on Tuesday in the UK, says, “Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt. This is it now—we have unmasked him.” One such non-believer, Richard Cobb, organizer of Jack the Ripper Conventions, points out that the shawl has been “openly handled by loads of people and been touched, breathed on, spat upon” over the past 126 years, making DNA less reliable than Edwards suggests.
