Jack the Ripper mystery may have finally been solved!

A mystery which captivated the world for 126 years may have finally been solved.
DNA found on a shawl found near Catherine Eddowes, one of the victims of The Ripper, contains a match to one of the long time suspects in the case, a Polish immigrant Aaron Kosminski. The hairdresser who moved to England in 1881 and lived with his family in Whitechapel, lived out his life at the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum where he died at the age of 53 in 1919.

 

jack the ripper
The man thought to be the “Jack the Ripper” 23 year old Polish immigrant Aaron Kosminkski.

 

The major breakthrough came when Dr Jari Louhelainen, an expert in historic DNA, was commissioned to study a shawl found near the second-last “confirmed” victim of the Ripper. The shawl was taken from the scene of the crime by Sergeant Amos Simpson, who was on duty the night of the Eddowes murder and wanted to take the shawl for his wife. Because the shawl was stained with blood, the wife did not want to wear it, so it was put away and mainly forgotten until it was sold at an auction in 2007. Dr. Louhelainen compared the DNA found on the shawl to that of female decedents of Kosminski’s sister who had voluntarily given a DNA swab from inside her mouth.

“The first strand of DNA showed a 99.2 per cent match, as the analysis instrument could not determine the sequence of the missing 0.8 per cent fragment of DNA. On testing the second strand, we achieved a perfect 100 per cent match.” Dr. Louhelainen told a British Newspaper.

Jack the Ripper is thought to have killed as much as 11 women in the Whitechapel area beginning in 1888. Police identified Kosminski as a suspect, but didn’t have enough evidence to bring him to trial.