One of history’s oldest mysteries — the true identity of mythologized 19th century serial killer “Jack the Ripper” — may have finally been solved nearly 140 years later.
English historian and author Russell Edwards said DNA found on a shawl recovered from the scene of one of the killer’s vicious slayings was tested, revealing the butcher who terrorized Victorian London’s East End in the late 1800s was a 23-year-old Polish immigrant named Aaron Kosminski — who died in a mental institution in 1919.
“When we matched the DNA from the blood on the shawl with a direct female descendant of the victim, it was the singular most amazing moment of my life at the time,” Edwards told “Today” in Australia.
“We tested the semen left on the shawl. When we matched that, I was dumbfounded that we actually had discovered who Jack the Ripper truly was.”
Jack the Ripper brutally raped and eviscerated five women, most of them sex workers, in and around the city’s impoverished Whitechapel district between 1888 and 1891 — though historians suspect the death toll was higher.
The victims were Mary Nichols, 43, Annie Chapman, 47, Elizabeth Stride, 44, Catherine Eddowes, 46, and Mary Jane Kelly, 25. Three of them had their internal organs removed.
After learning the shawl had been found at the scene of Eddowes’ gruesome killing, Edwards purchased in 2007.
“It was a voyage of discovery, with many twists and turns,” Edwards said. “The adventure was thrilling from beginning to end and I was lucky to experience it.”
Relatives of the five known victims have pushed Scotland Yard to take a fresh look at the 137-year-old cold case.
“We have got the proof, now we need this inquest to legally name the killer,” Edwards told “Today” in Australia. “It would mean a lot to me, to my family, to a lot of people to finally have this crime solved.”
Kosminski moved to England as a child, and worked as a barber in Whitechapel, Edwards learned.
He started showing symptoms of mental illness in 1885, and had been committed to a number of insane asylums.
Before his death at the age of 53, Kosminski reported having auditory hallucinations.
He feared other people, refused to eat and also would not bathe, according to Edwards.
Several online skeptics have questioned Edwards’ findings, however, pointing to allegations he faked finding the top of a child’s skull in 2022, sparking a new police search for the body of Keith Bennett.
The high-profile Moors Murders were a series of five child killings between 1963 and 1965, carried out by depraved couple Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in Manchester, England.
Bennett’s body marks the last remaining victim never to have been found.
Source: New York Post