By Alex Nash
The Whitechapel Murderer, the Leather Apron and most notoriously Jack the Ripper are all names used to denote the infamous killer who stalked the slums of the East End of London in the late 19th-century. Recently, another name has come to light — perhaps his real one. For nearly a century and a half, Jack the Ripper’s identity was unknown, his personhood defined by a gruesome history of brutal assaults and murders. Due to modern DNA technology, new information may have revealed the face of the notorious butcher behind the knife.
Aaron Kosminski was a young barber and Polish immigrant who settled in London’s slums. According to new evidence, he may have also been the perpetrator of a series of brutal murders on female sex-workers who resided in the Whitechapel district. His five known killings were very carefully orchestrated — throats slit and their internal organs removed.
Now, almost 140 years later, how did Kosminski’s identity come to light? English historian and novelist Russell Edwards, a Jack the Ripper enthusiast and author of “Naming Jack the Ripper,” came into possession of a shawl that belonged to one of the Ripper’s victims in 2007. He had already claimed that Kosminski was the killer in his novel, and when DNA tests were conducted on remnants of semen on the shawl, the DNA match confirmed Kosminski.
Kosminski was one of the original suspects between 1888 and 1891 when the murders were committed but was never arrested due to a lack of evidence. According to an alleged 1891 document referenced in People magazine, Kosminski “had strong homicidal tendencies” and “was prone to solitary vices and auditory hallucinations.” Kosminski was committed to a psychiatric hospital that year and remained institutionalized until his death in 1919.
DNA testing was not common until 100 years after the Ripper’s tirade, so it was not employed during the time of Scotland Yard’s investigations. Mythologized in works of fiction such as Sweeny Todd, Kosminski’s similar status as a barber aided his disturbing knowledge of dismemberment.
“In those days, you had anatomical knowledge (as a barber,) which when you know the case, you know that the murderer must have had anatomical knowledge to commit the crimes that he did,” Edwards told Today Australia.
Contrary to Edwards’ conclusion that the killer assuredly is Kosminski, Jack the Ripper’s identity has been allegedly “discovered” many times over the years. Critics often say that the evidence still is not strong enough to declare the case closed. However, this is the first time evidence has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. The study’s researchers, Jari Louhelainen Ph.D. and David Miller Ph.D. call it “the most advanced study to date regarding this case.”
Louhelainen and Miller, biochemists at Liverpool John Moores University, studied the shawl from Edwards and summarized the findings of their research in their paper “Forensic Investigation of a Shawl Linked to the ‘Jack the Ripper’ Murders,” which was first published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences in 2019.
“We obtained mitochondrial DNA sequences for identification of both the victim and the suspect candidate. Thus, finding both matching profiles in the same piece of evidence enhances the statistical probability of its overall identification and reinforces the claim that the shawl is authentic,” they wrote.
Due to the Data Protection Act in the UK, the DNA sequences of the relatives used to compare both Kosminski and his victims, were not published. Critics such as Hansi Weissensteiner, an Austrian mitochondrial expert, say that the samples used can only show that DNA samples are not related and that “based on mitochondrial DNA one can only exclude a suspect.” There is no substantial evidence that the shawl even belonged to a victim, or that the DNA could belong to any number of individuals in the crowded slums of Victorian London.
Published after the original peer-reviewed article was an Expression of Concern, where the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Forensic Sciences Michael Peat stated that the data is not entirely verified, due to the journal’s inability to obtain the original raw data from mtDNA analysis.
With decades of conflicting evidence, multiple suspects and true-crime fanatics seeking a neat conclusion, there is still no definitive answer on whether or not Kosminski, or anyone else, is the true Jack the Ripper. But, without a doubt, it is a fascinating plight to consider.
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