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While Jack the Ripper’s unsolved murders in London have fueled theories for over a century, the identity of the serial killer may soon be formally uncovered.
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Researchers and descendants of Jack the Ripper’s victims are seeking to finally unmask the notorious killer.
Over 130 years after the serial killer committed numerous gruesome murders in impoverished areas of East London, England, descendants of his victims and Jack the Ripper researchers, including Russell Edwards, are calling on an inquest to formally hold Aaron Kosminski legally responsible for the crimes.
Kosminski, a Polish immigrant who died in 1919, was a prime suspect in the five murders—which took place in 1988—but was never charged in the case. As for how Kosminski is being re-linked to the crimes a century later? DNA found on a shawl retrieved from the crime scene of one of the killer’s victims, Catherine Eddowes, matches a DNA sample provided by one of Kosminski’s living relatives, according to findings published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences in 2019.
“It’s very difficult to put into words the elation I felt when I saw the 100 percent DNA match,” Edwards, whose research led to the findings, told The Sun in an interview published Jan. 31. “This brings closure and a form of justice for the descendants.”
One of Eddowes’ descendants Karen Miller not only welcomes the findings but is looking for further investigation to make them official.
“We have the proof,” she told the Daily Mail Jan. 12. “Now we need this inquest to legally name the killer.”
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Still, some experts have questioned the validity of the findings and cautioned against deeming them conclusive. Walther Parson, a forensic scientist at Austria’s Innsbruck Medical University, questioned the journal’s omission of genetic sequences belonging to Eddowes and Kosminski’s living relatives, which were replaced in the paper by a graphic indicating the alleged connection between the shawl and the modern DNA sequences.
“Otherwise,” he told Science.org in 2019 when the journal was first published, “the reader cannot judge the result.”
Hansi Weissensteiner, a scientist at Austria’s Innsbruck Medical University, also argued that the DNA studied can only rule culprits out rather than conclusively identifying one.
“Based on mitochondrial DNA,” he told the outlet, “one can only exclude a suspect.”
A legal team hired by Edwards is preparing to call for an inquest into the matter, he told The Sun.
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