NEWS ....
DNA tests ‘prove’ that Jack the Ripper was a Polish immigrant named Aaron Kosminski.
NETWORK WRITERS NEWS CORP AUSTRALIA SEPTEMBER 07, 2014
THE search to uncover the identity of Jack the Ripper appears to be over.
DNA on a shawl found near one of the victims, Catherine Eddowes, reportedly contains a match to both her and one of the chief suspects, Aaron Kosminsky.
The Polish hairdresser, who moved to England with his family in 1881, was committed to a mental asylum at the peak of Ripper hysteria.
Is this Jack the Ripper?
The breakthrough came when Dr Jari Louhelainen, an expert in historic DNA, was commissioned to study a shawl found with Eddowes, the second-last “confirmed” victim of the Ripper more than 125 years ago. The shawl — which still retained historic stains — had been bought by a businessman at an auction in 2007.
“It has taken a great deal of hard work, using cutting-edge scientific techniques which would not have been possible five years ago,” Dr Louhelainen told a British newspaper.
“Once I had the profile, I could compare it to that of the female descendant of Kosminski’s sister, who had given us a sample of her DNA swabbed from inside her mouth.
“The first strand of DNA showed a 99.2 per cent match, as the analysis instrument could not determine the sequence of the missing 0.8 per cent fragment of DNA. On testing the second strand, we achieved a perfect 100 per cent match.”
Kosminski was born in Poland in 1865 before moving to Whitechapel, England, in 1881. The murders attributed to Jack the Ripper began in 1888, with up to 11 deaths around the Whitechapel area linked to the killer. Frances Coles, believed to be the Ripper’s last victim, died in February 1891 — the same year Kosminski was forcibly put in Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum. He remained in mental health facilities until his death in 1919, aged 53.
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For further reference: "Today in History" August 31 = "Jack the Ripper's" First Victim is Found =
http://historysstory.blogspot.com/2013/08/august-31-jack-rippers-first-victim-is.html
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Further comments from "Yahoo News" an article by Robin Millard, today, 9/8/14:
Some have cast doubt on Edwards' findings.
The research has not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, meaning the claims cannot be independently verified or the methodology scrutinized.
Professor Alec Jeffreys, who invented the DNA fingerprinting technique 30 years ago this week, called for further verification.
"An interesting but remarkable claim that needs to be subjected to peer review, with detailed analysis of the provenance of the shawl and the nature of the claimed DNA match with the perpetrator's descendants and its power of discrimination; no actual evidence has yet been provided," Jeffreys told The Independent newspaper.
Sources:
The above quoted article from the Advertiser of Adelaide can be found in it's entirety at:
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/world/dna-tests-prove-that-jack-the-ripper-was-a-polish-immigrant-named-aaron-kosminski/story-fni6um3i-1227050842205?nk=6755987c302705c1263b3e410c39fa22
The full article from Yahoo News can be found at:
http://news.yahoo.com/jack-ripper-identified-dna-traces-sleuth-024421946.html
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Follow -up from more recent sources quoted on Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Kosminski)
"On 7 September 2014, Dr. Jari Louhelainen, an expert in historic DNA analysis, announced that he had been commissioned by British author Russell Edwards[35][36] to study a shawl supposedly found with victim Catherine Eddowes and that he had extracted mitochondrial DNA that matches female line descendants of Eddowes, and mitochondrial DNA that matches female line descendants of Kosminski's sister from the shawl.[35][37] Louhelainen stated that "The first strand of DNA showed a 99.2 percent match, as the analysis instrument could not determine the sequence of the missing 0.8 percent fragment of DNA. On testing the second strand, we achieved a perfect 100 percent match.
"In his book Naming Jack The Ripper, Edwards names Kosminski as Jack the Ripper. Edwards was inspired to try to finally solve the case after the release of From Hell, the 2001Johnny Depp film about the Whitechapel murders.[39] He bought at auction the shawl from which the DNA was extracted and commissioned Louhelainen, with Miller assisting, to analyze it for forensic DNA evidence.[39] Edwards states that Kosminski was on a list of police suspects but there was never enough evidence to bring him to trial at the time. Kosminski died at the age of 53 of gangrene of the leg in a London mental hospital in 1919.[40] He says, however, that the DNA samples can now prove that Kosminski was "definitely, categorically and absolutely" the person responsible for the Whitechapel murders.
"The primary criticism of the initial report centered around the fact that the findings first appeared in Britain's tabloid Daily Mail newspaper.[37][41] One critic, Susannah L. Bodman ofThe Oregonian newspaper pointed out that "The Daily Mail's reporting on science and scientific evidence is—let's say—not known to be robust." Other criticisms include questions about "the chain of evidence or provenance on the shawl", the fact that publishing the information in the press "is not the same as reporting and publishing your methods in a peer-reviewed journal",[42] and concerns regarding the entire recent body of Jack the Ripper investigative and historical forensic work in general, pointing out how often the work of mediums and clairvoyants, human interest angles, recycled evidence from coroner's courts and other sources and the general acceptance of misinformation and urban myth as fact have undermined and hobbled previous efforts to conduct objective, scientific investigations.[43]
"Louhelainen's findings have not been subject to peer review by other scientists or investigators.[37][41] Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, the forensic scientist who invented DNA fingerprinting in 1984, initially commented that the find was "an interesting but remarkable claim that needs to be subjected to peer review, with detailed analysis of the provenance of the shawl and the nature of the claimed DNA match with the perpetrator's descendants and its power of discrimination".[37] He went on to point out that the evidence has not been received or examined yet by independent third parties.[37]"
Brian again :
So in other words..., this evidence may be what they say it is, but they won't
have it absolutely sealed as such until they submit their findings to independent third party review. So whether or not they have actually put the finger on "Jack the Ripper" will just have to wait for further review.
IF and when the author Russell Edwards is willing to do so....
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