The 136 year case may finally be over
A Jack the Ripper expert who has spent almost three decades researching him claims to have recreated the face of the notorious serial killer.
Jack the Ripper is known to have killed and mutilated at least five women in the Whitechapel area of London over a four month period from August to November 1888. It is thought he may have killed more.
Russell Edwards, an author and Ripper investigator, says he’s used cutting-edge facial reconstruction technology to generate a CGI black and white image of what the murderer would have looked at the time of his murders in 1888.
Edwards claims to have used DNA evidence from the shawl of one of the victims to “prove” that Jack the Ripper was actually a man called Aaron Kosminski.
Kosminski was a Jewish immigrant from Poland who was a prime suspect in the series murders.
Edwards makes the claims about the Ripper’s identity in his second book about the case, in which he also claims to have worked out why the killer mutilated his victims and managed to escape capture.
Three victims had internal organs removed, leading to speculation that the killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge.
The police actually investigated the killings of 11 women, almost all of which worked as prostitutes, from April 1888 to February 1891, known as the Whitechapel murders.
It is widely accepted that the third to the seventh of these were committed by the Ripper. These victims – Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly – have become known as the Canonical Five.
When Eddowes’ body was discovered, a silk shawl on her was recovered from the scene. This was covered in blood.
Edwards apparently found the alleged shawl at an auction in Bury St Edmunds in 2007 and purchased it.
He put it through DNA testing which found blood and semen stains on the shawl, with the blood matching a descendant of Eddowes.
Edwards says the semen stains were a DNA match for a distant relative of one of Kosminski, the Mirror reports.
In his first book, Naming Jack the Ripper, Edwards identified Kosminski as the infamous serial killer.
In his follow-up book, he reiterates his belief that Kosminski was the Ripper, writing that police believed him to have a “great hatred of women, specially of the prostitute class, and had strong homicidal tendencies.”
His claims about the DNA on the shawl have been contested though. Back in 2014, fellow Ripper expert Andrew Smith said there was no forensic evidence for the case, claiming it was “highly unlikely” any DNA evidence on the shawl hadn’t been contaminated.
Others have also questioned the authenticity of the shawl.
