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New DNA Analysis On Old Blood Pegs Aaron Kosminski As Jack the Ripper
It surely won't be the last theory offered, but a century and a quarter after the notorious crimes of Jack the Ripper, an "armchair detective" has employed DNA analysis on the blood-soaked shawl of one of the Ripper's victims, and has declared it in a new book an unambiguous match with Jewish immigrant Aaron Kosminski, long considered a suspect. Kosminski died in 1919 in an insane asylum. The landmark discovery was made after businessman Russell Edwards, 48, bought the shawl at auction and enlisted the help of Dr Jari Louhelainen, a world-renowned expert in analysing genetic evidence from historical crime scenes. Using cutting-edge techniques, Dr Louhelainen was able to extract 126-year-old DNA from the material and compare it to DNA from descendants of [Ripper victim Catherine] Eddowes and the suspect, with both proving a perfect match.
(Also at The Independent.) It's not the first time DNA evidence has been used to try to pin down the identity of Jack the Ripper, but the claimed results in this case are far less ambiguous than another purported mitochondrial DNA connection promoted by crime novelist Patricia Cornwell in favor of artist Walter Sickert as the killer in a 2002 book. Update: 09/07 16:03 GMT by T : Corrected Sickert's first name, originally misstated as "William."
Jack the Ripper was a fucking Jedi?
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did anyone stop to consider this guy was just a john?? he was emaciated and couldn't have had the strength or energy to overpower these hookers...
wouldn't just reveal the identity of the victim. ("y'see, it was a man's- blood!" "y'see the ripper had cut 'imself shav'n that morning" "y'see the worker girl she had 'er own knife a'course")
So we can say that DNA evidence is part of a chain that can lead to guilt, and if we assume the known suspects represent the total population of possible suspects, then if the DNA exonerates all other suspects, then there is a case to be made for guilt, but that is a lot of caveats. As we have seen in many cases, obvious suspects are ignored because the authorities jump to quick conclusions. As said, DNA is good for exonerating people, not convicts them.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
...businessman Russell Edwards, 48, bought the shawl...
Why do they throw his age in there? Why does it matter? Is that in any possible way related to the story? I'm not calling out this story in particular, I see this all the time. I'd like to know the motivation behind the trend.
You uneducated buffoon, Timothy!
There was no blood other than the victims on the shawl. And even that was only determined to match through mitochondrial DNA.
What they claim to have matched "definitely, categorically and absolutely" to the murderer are "traces of semen thought to belong to the killer".
Traces of semen. On the clothes of ONE of the victims. Who was a prostitute.
Clearly, "Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt."
Non-believers perpetuating myths? I'm not sure that's how it goes.
From TFA:
A blood-stained shawl belonging to one of the Ripper's victims bought at an auction in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, in 2007 was used as the basis for the research.
As well as being soaked in her blood, it was found to have traces of semen thought to belong to the killer.
Mr Edwards said: âoeI've got the only piece of forensic evidence in the whole history of the case.
âoeI've spent 14 years working on it, and we have definitively solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was.
"Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt. This is it now - we have unmasked him."
BUT WAIT! There is more... it is once again mitochondrial.
In other words...
Critics, however, have pointed out that the DNA comparisons focused on mitochondrial DNA, which could be shared by anything from between 1% and 10% of the population, so it was hardly unique to Sickert.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
It was impossible to extract DNA from the stains on the shawl using the method employed in current cases, in which swabs are taken. The samples were just too old.
Instead, he used a method he called âvacuumingâ(TM), using a pipette filled with a special âbufferingâ(TM) liquid that removed the genetic material in the cloth without damaging it.
As a non-scientist, I found myself in a new world as Jari warned that it would also be impossible to use genomic DNA, which is used in fresh cases and contains a humanâ(TM)s entire genetic data, because over time it would have become fragmented.
But he explained it would be possible to use mitochondrial DNA instead. It is passed down exclusively through the female line, is much more abundant than genomic DNA, and survives far better.
Making it exactly as valid as the Walter Sickert "evidence" from postage stamps.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Like the one just below...
Concentrating on the ethnicity of that POLISH immigrant sure will bring more clicks to the topic.
After all... We haven't had a nice flame war since that last "Misogyny. Misogyny everywhere." story.
But that was just about women and games and there aren't enough REAL lunatics interested in that.
We all know, real loonies is where the clicks are.
So we clearly need the next one to be racial-ethnic-religious with all tangential conspiracy theories as a bonus. And lest we forget... Palestine, Gaza, West Bank, Israel.
Thanks timothy. :)
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I wonder if this guy was a distant relation of Kaczynski's (Unabomber). I did a quick search and didn't find anything about Kaczynski's ancestry, though.
Most likely he is. And probably Kevin Bacon too. 6 or fewer connections to either.
That's DNA, not DVD.
I just read somewhere that the DNA evidence so far points to some unnamed woman, who is thought to have masqueraded as a midwife.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
There is more to it than that: This is an area which was mainly populated by Jewish Immigrants at the time. If he wasn't one, he would have been more conspicuous as an insider - so it IS relevant.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
1. The blood on the rag was the female's and the semen on the rag was Aaron's.
2. This doesn't necessarily prove that Aaron was the Ripper, just that he was there. It's possible that someone else killed her and left her for dead. Then Aaron walking by found the corpse and masturbated on it. He was known to have been a sicko who did unspeakable things.
3. There is a strong case that it was Cohen because he was specifically linked to murders of prostitutes, and the crimes stopped the same year he was confined to the asylum.
4. There's some suggestion that Cohen was an alias the Asylum used because Aaron's last name was too difficult to pronounce. It may have been the same man.
Only if you accept that the results are accurate despite the decay and age of the sample that hadn't been stored in an appropriate manner to preserve the integrity of the dna as well as avoid contamination by other source which include bacteria that like to eat it, and that the blood was actually from Jack The Ripper and not from someone else, possible another victim.
:P
Run on sentence of the year award? Nope, still too short.
And, of course, it's inconceiveable that there were cross-dressing prostitutes during that period?
---- a fact which would not be discovered in the autopsy of a crudely mutilated victim?
Using cutting-edge techniques, Dr Louhelainen was able to extract 126-year-old DNA from the material
I hear Jack the Ripper also used cutting edge techniques.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Moby Dick is fiction, but was highly influenced and factually informed by the tragic events and wreck of the whaleship Essex. Melville was consumed by the stories of the surviving crew, and was inspired by them to write Moby-Dick. It's a fictional work immersed in a strong, accurate nonfiction document.
The following book about the Essex is superb, for those with further interest. It won a nonfiction National Book Award. You will stay up very late reading it.
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick.
Not really. But there's a serious question in my mind as to why it is assumed that "Jack the Ripper" was a individual person (though it's reasonable to assume that this was true before the papers picked up the story).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There is nothing in the story as published that in ANY WAY identifies Jack the Ripper.
Even if every word published is true and the science stands up to every scrutiny, all it really shows is that a man and a woman who lived in/worked in/frequented the same areas came into contact at least once during the period between 1888 and 1891 in which Jack the Ripper was active.
It shows NOTHING more than that.
Anybody who thinks it does either hasn't read the article (no, they definitely DON'T have a series of hi-res colour photographs or a 1080p video of Aaron Kosminski ripping open the body and no, the victim did not survive long enough to provide the police with her killer's name, address and e-fit nor to pick him out of a police line-up) or possibly just doesn't understand what it means (no, you can't take a random DNA sample from an unreliable source of uncertain provenance, identify it as belonging to a specific person and then TRUTHFULLY say "The fact that this DNA is definitely from person A proves conclusively that person A was in this alleyway between 20.08 and 20.19 on a Sunday evening 125 years ago" - this sort of science simply doesn't have THAT ridiculously specific level of accuracy) and is therefore simply forming an opinion from a position of ignorance.
In this instance we could simply assume that the author doesn't understand the DNA results (certainly a possibility) but it's also possible that the science is simply being deliberately misrepresented in order to suggest some validity for the book.
Either way, there's 1 simple fact here - this investigation DOES NOT prove that Kosminski was Jack the Ripper nor does it offer any CREDIBLE evidence to make Kosminski significantly more likely than other suggested perpetrators.
I really doubt the claim that in the victorian era, Poland was literally flooded by jews. Figuratively, maybe, but I do not think that word 'literally' means what you think it means.
Who is John Cabal?
It's not the bloody that's allegedly the perpetrator's, but semen found on the shawl. I'm surprised nobody else replying to you seems to have done their homework either.
Wow. What century is this again? I thought most people who said garbage like this died out a long time ago.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Poland, apparently.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
But they're both named K-vowel-consonant-consonant-vowel-nski.
That can't be a coincidence.
You mean another victim that was somehow related to Aaron Kosminski? The other victim would need to be related to have a DNA match.
~~
Possibly because he was seen with Catherine Eddows by Joseph Lawende, Joseph Hyam Levy and Harry Harris less than eleven minutes prior to the murder, among other reasons.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
So we clearly need the next one to be racial-ethnic-religious with all tangential conspiracy theories as a bonus. And lest we forget... Palestine, Gaza, West Bank, Israel.
Well, Jack the Ripper's ethnicity is relevant to the story. The sentiment at the time was that the Ripper's crime was so heinous that he must have been an immigrant since no British person would commit such heinous crimes. The Ripper's ethnicity would be relevant to that sentiment. Similarly for his religious affinity. There was some graffiti found near Eddowes's apron saying, "The Juwes are the men who will not be blamed for nothing." (Variant spellings are in the records.) Some people hold that the graffiti was not written by the Ripper. Some hold that it was, and expressed Jack's anti-Semitic beliefs. Some hold that the Ripper was Jewish and wrote the graffiti to throw off suspicion.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Redjac will next strike in 2105 on the Martian Colonies.
(Did a search and could not find the obligatory Star Trek reference in this posting.)
Tracy Johnson
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BT
If true, that would invalidate Alan Moore's theory...
I'm not knowledgeable enough about the era or the facts to have a definitive opinion about the validity of his interpretation, but I do have to say that if the next-to-last victim was using the name of the last victim for her nickname (as Moore says), it is indeed a strong indication that the murders were not random.
Well, Jack the Ripper's ethnicity is relevant to the story. The sentiment at the time was that the Ripper's crime was so heinous that he must have been an immigrant since no British person would commit such heinous crimes.
First off, now is not "at the time".
Nor is any rationale provided for why would such labeling be of any importance now, nor why would ANY ethnic or religious attributes be relevant to either murders or the identification of the murderer EVER.
There was never any evidence or testimony of any ethnic or religious identity of the murderer.
Nor were murders ever explained as a religious or ethnic ritual - other than in completely made up conspiracy theories involving everything from royal family, through obligatory masonic this or that, to Lewis Carroll.
Because he wrote weird books. Clearly, Alice was written in code, describing his murders.
The whole "connection", including the graffiti you mention, boils down to "some people were very anti-Semitic back then".
Which provides as much reasoning to prominently point out the ethnicity of a supposed "proven" murderer as it would to point out the ethnicity of any famous murderer.
Try it like this...
Do articles about John Wilkes Booth start with the mention of his ethnicity and religious affiliation?
How about Lee Harvey Oswald?
How about John Wayne Gacy?
Theodore Robert Bundy?
Charles Milles Manson?
Here's an easy one... Adolf Hitler. Do articles on Hitler start "Adolph Hitler, a Catholic dictator..."?
What you are providing up there is not a valid reason but RATIONALIZATION of one's either deliberate attempt at sensationalism or utter lack of tact or reason.
I'll exclude the possibility of racism cause that would be beyond retarded.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you are talking about one incident. I'm proposing that several indepent individuals separately perpetrated the crimes that were attribted to one single individual rather than to one individual and a few copycats.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I'm proposing that several indepent individuals separately perpetrated the crimes that were attribted to one single individual rather than to one individual and a few copycats.
I was basing that on your statement that it is assumed that Jack the Ripper was an individual person. If you include the eighteen alleged victims, then it's false that it is assumed Jack the Ripper was a solitary individual. For example, Emma Elizabeth Smith is one of the eighteen and prior to her death she reported that she had been attacked by three or four men. On the other hand, if you include only Martha Tabram, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly, then one person was sufficient to account for all of the evidence generally available. Some evidence, such as the sighting I mentioned earlier, suggests that one person was necessary. Patterns in the evidence also suggest that it was the same person for those six murders (or five, if you wish to remain canonical).
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
I meant the 5, and actually I'm only considering a copycat for after the papers had started sensationalizing. Say after #3. (You clearly know more about it than I do.) I *expect* that there was only one perpetrator, but if someone is going to claim to have a proven solution, then one of the things that needs proving is that there was only one perpetrator.
FWIW, I'm surprized that there were only five. ISTM that some more-recent serial killers have had a larger number of victims, and yet "Jack" lingers as the exemplar of the type.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I meant the 5, and actually I'm only considering a copycat for after the papers had started sensationalizing. Say after #3. (You clearly know more about it than I do.)
Thank you for the compliment. You are very kind. I believe the papers started sensationalising after the first murder (Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols). The reason for that is that there were two prior murders shortly before Polly's. They were Emma Smith's and Martha Tabram's, both of whom I've already mentioned. Of the five, only three murders are almost universally believed to have been committed by one person. Those were Polly Nichols's, Annie Chapman's, and Catherine Eddowes's. The reason they were believed to have been committed by the same man is that all three victims had facial or neck bruises, all three had their throats cut, and all three had abdominal wounds. Elizabeth had bruises and a throat wound, but no abdominal wound. Mary Kelly had very extensive injuries, and was the only one murdered indoors. Of those people who believe Stride was a Ripper victim, they explain away the lack of abdominal wounds by the fact that the murderer was quite likely interrupted mid-murder. He simply didn't have time to cause the abdominal wounds. Of those people who believe Kelly was a Ripper victim, they explain the extent of the injuries by the fact that her's was the only one that offered the Ripper extensive time and privacy to accomplish them.
Of the people who don't think Polly Nichols was murdered by Jack the Ripper, they point to the fact that her murder was the only one committed in the street. Of the people who don't think Annie Chapman was murdered by Jack the Ripper, they point to the fact that her murder was the only one committed in a back yard. Of the people who don't think Catherine Eddowes was murdered by Jack the Ripper, they point to the fact that her murder was the only one not committed in London's East End. So, as you can see, people don't assume that all of the "Jack the Ripper murders" were committed by one person.
One additional point, if I may. It doesn't make much sense to say that sensationalism happened after the third canonical murder (Elizabeth Stride), because the fourth canonical murder (Catherine Eddowes) was only one hour later. There simply wasn't time between the third and fourth murders for any sensationalism to happen.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.