Jack the Ripper solved - the mystery that has shrouded one of the infamous serial killers in the 19th century has finally been solved after Jack the Ripper's DNA has been retrieved from a woman's shawl, the Washington Post has learned.
According to a UK "armchair detective," Jack the Ripper's DNA was subjected to high-tech DNA technology called "vacuuming" after it was retrieved from the shawl of one of his victims.
Russell Edwards, 48, claimed that the notorious serial killer was 23-year-old Polish immigrant Aaron Kosminski, adding that he was "definitely, categorically and absolutely" responsible for killing a number of people in 1888 in London.
In his statement, Edwards narrated that he purchased the blood-stained woman's shawl which belonged to one of Jack the Ripper's victims, Catherine Eddows, at an auction in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
At the auction, the shawl was presented as one of the items that was found near the mutilated corpse of Eddows by a policeman who had kept it as a gift for his wife.
However, the officer's wife was allegedly not pleased with his husband's gift such that she didn't bother to clean it and use it, noted the Guardian.
"I've got the only piece of forensic evidence in the whole history of the case," Edwards, who claimed that the mystery behind Jack the Ripper is solved, said. "I've spent 14 years working on it, and we have definitively solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was."
In the book by Pan Macmillan titled "Naming Jack the Ripper," Edwards maintains that Kosminski was the serial killer and he even describes the "vacuuming" technology that helped him solve the Jack the Ripper case.
Edwards enlisted molecular biology expert Jari Louhelainen's help in retrieving traces of the woman's DNA on the shawl as well as the DNA of her killer.
Through "vacuuming," Louhelainen extracted 126-year-old DNA samples from the shawl and compared it with the DNA from Eddows' descendants, as well as with Kosminski's since he was and still is the prime suspect in the killings.
The DNA sample from Kosminski's descendants through his sister proved to be the perfect match to the DNA of Eddows' killer.
The entire process of plotting Jack the Ripper's DNA took about three and a half years.
"When we discovered the truth it was the most amazing feeling of my entire life," Edwards said.
Although the identity of Jack the Ripper's solved, there are still others who do not believe Edwards' findings.
Richard Cobb, who is behind the Jack the Ripper conventions and tours, claims that the blood-stained shawl from the killer's victim had been touched by numerous people already such that the DNA samples taken are not at all reliable.
"The shawl has been openly handled by loads of people and been touched, breathed on, spat upon," Cobb said.
In the 19th century, notorious serial killer famously referred to as Jack the Ripper killed at least five women by cutting their throats, removing their internal organs and leaving their bodies mutilated in alleyways in Whitechapel.
There were initially six suspects in the case, and some were even from the highest echelons of English society at the time, like the Duke of Clarence.
However, since then police have viewed Kosminski, a Polis Jewish immigrant, as the primary suspect.
Kosminski, who is now claimed to be Jack the Ripper spent his final days in a couple of lunatic asylums, where he died of gangrene in 1899.
It is note-worthy that in a BBC History Magazine survey, Jack the Ripper was voted the worst Briton of the last 1,000 years.
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