Solved: DNA testing reveals Jack the Ripper was a Polish hairdresser

An amateur sleuth has put the mystery of Jack the Ripper to rest after 126 years of speculation. Russell Edwards says his investigation proves once and for all that Aaron Kosminski, a Polish hairdresser who died in an asylum, was “definitely, categorically and absolutely” the man behind the 1888 grisly killing spree in London’s East End. The mystery was unravelled after he bought a blood-stained shawl at a 2007 auction in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. The shawl was rumoured to have been found next to the body of Ripper victim, Catherine Eddowes.

Here I am with the shawl and possibly the evidence to solve the most unsolvable murder in English criminal history. But where do I start? That was the big question.

Russell Edwards, amateur sleuth and author

Molecular biologist Jari Louhelainen examined the shawl and found arterial blood, kidney cells and semen on the shawl. Eddowes’s kidney was removed after she was murdered and DNA testing of her three-times great-granddaughter Karen Miller proved a perfect match to the blood stain. The semen was matched to Kosminski. Jack the Ripper murdered at least five women, slashing their throats, removing some of their internal organs and leaving their mutilated bodied in Whitechapel’s darkened alleyways. Kosminski was a Polish Jewish immigrant who, fleeing persecution in his Russia-controlled homeland, came with his family to England in 1881 and lived in Mile End Old Town. He was admitted to a string of lunatic asylums and died of gangrene in 1899.

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