Jack the Ripper identified by DNA evidence

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I have no idea. Probably some nobody, and probably more than one person due to copycats and coverups.

[Boris Godunov]

Nichols, Chapman, and Eddowes are certainly the same killer. No experts believe otherwise. Stride is very likely, otherwise it was an awfully huge coincidence that she was killed by throat-slashing on the same night as another Ripper victim. It's not like prostitutes were being killed every day in Whitechapel. Kelly is definitely a candidate for a copy-cat who was trying to make it look like a Ripper killing. The M.O. is slightly different, in that she was considerably younger than the other victims, the murder occurred indoors rather than in the street and it there are indications Kelly knew her killer. All of the other murders in the Whitechapel case file are not considered Ripper killings by the experts, since they all had vastly different M.O.s.

There was a 1980s profile of the Ripper written up by an FBI expert on serial killers, and in it the point was made that it was extremely likely that the culprit was interviewed by police and they may have had a good idea of who the killer was, although no evidence with which to make an arrest. Frighteningly enough, this is apparently extremely common in serial killing investigations to this day: the police pinpoint a likely suspect, but either a lack of evidence or sheer incompetence prevents them from stopping him right away. This happened with Peter Sutcliffe, Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer and many others.

Given that, I think Kosminski is as likely a suspect as any other, given his being named as a prime suspect by two different police investigators (Macnaghton and Swanson). Of course, Macnaghton favored M.J. Druitt above all others, who I think is a really implausible candidate to be the Ripper.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

There are two separate Kosminskis linked to the murders, which confuses issues. The one they have tested in this case was anorexic, and I have to question whether he'd be capable of overpowering all these hookers.

[Boris Godunov]

Not two Kosminskis, but Aaron Kosminski and another Polish Jew named "David Cohen" whose actual name is believed by some to be Nathan Kaminsky. Cohen's confinement to asylum and death actually matches Swanson's description, while Kosminski didn't die until decades later. There's a theory that Swanson mixed up the name of Kaminsky with Kosminski. But that's a bit of a stretch to believe, since Macnaghton also specifically gave the name of Kosminski, and he was certainly talking about Aaron. He describes his Kosminski as indulging in "solitary vices," and this matches the asylum records of Aaron Kosminski, who was prone to excessive masturbation, it seems. His date of confinement also matches Macnaghton's memorandum

In 1988, there was a television special called The Secret Identity of Jack the Ripper, hosted by Peter Ustinov. The show convened a panel of various experts that included a forensic pathologist, a criminologist, a prosecuting attorney and two FBI special agents. In the end, the panel unanimously voted that Kosminski was the most likely suspect, among those named. One of the FBI agents said something I thought pretty apt: if it wasn't Kosminski, it was someone just like him.

If we take Anderson and Swanson's accounts as accurate, then the Ripper was unquestionably identified by a witness at a seaside police safe house, put under 24-hour surveillance and then eventually carted off to an asylum where he later died.

[molly bloom]

A profiler on yet another documentary about the world's most (in)famous serial killer said that given the pattern of killings, the unsub was most likely to have been a local resident- so we can definitely leave out Walter Sickert, the Queen's physician, the Duke of Clarendon and Queen Victoria.

[Alexander's Horse]

I'm sticking with the Prince of Wales, far more titillating

[Boris Godunov]

I'm sticking with the Prince of Wales, far more titillating

The Royal Conspiracy suspect is the Duke of Clarence (the Prince of Wales's son and Queen Vic's grandson), not the prince himself.

[Sava]

Jack the Ripper: Scientist who claims to have identified notorious killer has 'made serious DNA error'

'Error of nomenclature' undermines case against Polish immigrant barber accused of carrying out the atrocities in 1888


It was supposed to have been the definitive piece of scientific evidence that finally exposed the true identify of Jack the Ripper after he had brutally murdered at least five women on the streets of Whitechapel in the East End of London, 126 years ago.

A 23-year-old Polish immigrant barber called Aaron Kosminski was "definitely, categorically and absolutely" the man who carried out the atrocities in 1888, according to a detailed analysis of DNA extracted from a silk shawl allegedly found at the scene of one of his murders.

However, the scientist who carried out the DNA analysis has apparently made a fundamental error that fatally undermines his case against Kosminski – and once again throws open the debate over who the identity of the Ripper.

The scientist, Jari Louhelainen, is said to have made an "error of nomenclature" when using a DNA database to calculate the chances of a genetic match. If true, it would mean his calculations were wrong and that virtually anyone could have left the DNA that he insisted came from the Ripper's victim. The apparent error, first noticed by crime enthusiasts in Australia blogging on the casebook.org website, has been highlighted by four experts with intimate knowledge of DNA analysis – including Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, the inventor of genetic fingerprinting – who found that Dr Louhelainen made a basic mistake in analysing the DNA extracted from a shawl supposedly found near the badly disfigured body of Ripper victim Catherine Eddowes.

They say the error means no DNA connection can be made between Kosminski and Eddowes. Any suggestion therefore that the Ripper and Kosminski are the same person appears to be based on conjecture and supposition – as it has been ever since the police first identified Kosminksi as a possible suspect more than a century ago.

The latest flurry of interest in Kosminski, who died in a lunatic asylum, aged 53, stems from a book, Naming Jack the Ripper, published earlier this year, by Russell Edwards, a businessman who bought the shawl in 2007 on the understanding that it was the same piece of cloth allegedly found next to Eddowes.

A Ripper murder A Ripper murder (Alamy) "I've got the only piece of forensic evidence in the whole history of the case. I've spent 14 years working, and we have finally 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," Edwards told The Mail on Sunday, which serialised his book.

Edwards commissioned Dr Louhelainen, a molecular biologist at Liverpool John Moores University, to carry out a forensic analysis of the shawl, including the extraction of any DNA samples that may be present within the cloth, which had been supposedly stored unwashed all this time by the family of the London policeman who had acquired the artefact.

Dr Louhelainen, who declined to answer questions, managed to extract seven incomplete fragments of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and tried to match their sequences with mtDNA from a living descendant of Eddowes, called Karen Miller.

Professor Walther Parson of the Institute of Legal Medicine in Innsbruck has echoed Professor Jeffreys' concerns Professor Walther Parson of the Institute of Legal Medicine in Innsbruck has echoed Professor Jeffreys' concerns

The work has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and the only detailed description by Dr Louhelainen comes from Edwards' book. "One of these amplified mtDNA segments had a sequence variation which gave a match between one of the shawl samples and Karen Miller's DNA only; ie the DNA sequence retrieved from the shawl did not match with control reference sequences," Dr Louhelainen writes.

"This DNA alteration is known as global private mutation (314.1C) and it is not very common in worldwide population, as it has frequency estimate of 0.000003506, i.e. approximately 1/290,000. This figure has been calculated using the database at Institute of Legal Medicine, GMI, based on the latest available information. Thus, this result indicates the shawl contains human DNA identical to Karen Miller's for this mitochondrial DNA segment," he says.

But experts with detailed knowledge of the GMI's mtDNA database claimed that Dr Louhelainen made an "error of nomenclature" because the mutation in question should be written as "315.1C" and not "314.1C". Had Dr Louhelainen done this, and followed standard forensic practice, he would have discovered the mutation was not rare at all but shared by more than 99 per cent of people of European descent.

"If the match frequency really is 90 per cent plus, and not 1/290,000, then obviously there is no significance whatsoever in the match between the shawl and Eddowes' descendant, and the same match would have been seen with almost anyone who had handled the shawl over the years," Professor Jeffreys said.

Dr Louhelainen appears to have made a basic error in calculating the frequency estimate. There are currently about 34,617 entries in the GMI database, and the figure would have been nearer to 29,000 when Dr Louhelainen carried out his research some time ago. So failing to find a match for a non-existent mutation should have given a frequency of about 1/29,000 – an error suggesting that he had placed a decimal point in the wrong place.

"The random match probability of a sequence only seen once [as claimed for the shawl] is therefore roughly 1/34,617. With a database of this size, it is impossible to arrive at an estimate as low as 1/290,000," Professor Jeffreys said.

Other scientists echoed Professor Jeffreys' concerns, including Mannis van Oven, professor of forensic molecular biology at Rotterdam's Erasmus University, Professor Walther Parson of the Institute of Legal Medicine in Innsbruck, and Hansi Weissensteiner, also at Innsbruck and one of the scientists behind the computer algorithm used by Dr Louhelainen to search the mtDNA database.

A spokesperson for publishers Sidgwick & Jackson said: "The author stands by his conclusions. We are investigating the reported error in scientific nomenclature. However, this does not change the DNA profiling match and the probability of the match calculated from the rest of the haplotype data. The conclusion reached in the book, that Aaron Kosminski was Jack the Ripper, relies on much more than this one figure."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/jack-the-ripper-id-hinges-on-a-decimal-point-as-scientists-flag-up-dna-error-in-book-that-claims-to-identify-the-whitechapel-killer-9804325.html

[benren]

that's crazy. has anyone seen all the different letters from people claiming to be him?

"
From hell.
Mr Lusk,
Sor
I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman and prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer
signed
Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk"

[Boris Godunov]

I doubt *any* of the letters that were sent to the authorities were from the actual killer. The "From Hell" letter is given legitimacy because of the piece of human kidney that accompanied it, but the police at the time were pretty certain it was a hoax, possibly perpetrated by medical students, as it had been preserved in alcohol. However, it did come from a human female ~45 years old w/ disease caused by excessive alcohol consumption, which fits the profile of Catherine Eddowes, so it might have been real.

Regarding the Aaron Kosminski DNA evidence of my original post, the subsequent information that has come out about it in the past year has pretty much debunked it as anything valid. In fact, it's worthless. Kosminski remains a viable suspect simply because of his mention by McNaughton, but without this DNA match, he seems pretty unlikely. He was apparently a raving lunatic--although deemed harmless--who tended to rove the streets shirtless and eat trash out of the gutter. Doesn't really fit the profile of a calculating killer who, while opportunistic in his choice of victims, clearly put some thought and planning into the murders.

[Sava]

My life feels the same whether I know this information or not

[giblets]

Sava is the ripper

[Boris Godunov]

Only of farts.

[Sava]

last night for sure