Jack the Ripper

[LunaticFringe]

1888 was a bad year to be a prostitute. Between August 7 and November 10 of that year, five women were killed in the Whitechapel district of London's East End, their throats slashed and their bodies mutilated in a way that indicated they all met their fates at the hands of the same person. One victim's kidney was even mailed to the police, along with a series of taunting notes penned by someone calling himself Jack the Ripper. Serial murder was a relatively new phenomenon and the attacks were highly publicized. The law's failure to identify the killer led to such an outcry that both the home secretary and London police commissioner resigned in disgrace.





Jack the Ripper, whoever he was, has been the subject of hundreds of books and articles. The theories surrounding his identity vary from a covert Masonic plot to a member of the royal family. Here are the most likely suspects:





Montague Druitt, a barrister with knowledge of human anatomy. Rumored to be insane, he disappeared after the last murder; his body was later found floating in the River Thames.





George Chapman, a barber who lived in Whitechapel during the time of the murders and who was later found guilty of poisoning three of his wives.





Aaron Kosminski, a Whitechapel resident known for his affinity for prostitutes. He was hospitalized in an asylum several months after the last murder.











Read more: Jack the Ripper - Top 10 Unsolved Crimes - TIME content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1867198_1867170_1867220,00.html #ixzz2vCAwBmH5

[MoMo]

'Jack the Ripper' Identity Discovered?

It is one of the world's greatest murder mysteries which has baffled investigators for more than a century.

But now an author and self confessed "armchair detective" claims to have solved perhaps the most notorious whodunit ever, and discovered who Jack the Ripper was.

Russell Edwards claims Aaron Kosminski, a 23 year-old Polish immigrant who ended up dying in an asylum, was "definitely, categorically and absolutely" the man behind the grisly killing spree in 1888 in London's East End.

Mr Edwards said a blood-stained shawl he bought in 2007 after an auction in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, held vital DNA evidence which led him to the killer.

Naming Jack the Ripper

He said: "I've got the only piece of forensic evidence in the whole history of the case. I'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."

Jack the Ripper murdered at least five women, slashing their throats, removing some of their internal organs and leaving their mutilated bodied in Whitechapel's darkened alleyways.

Mr Edwards, 48, from Barnet, north London, was "captivated" by the murder mystery and had been investigating it in his spare time, but had come to the conclusion it could never be solved.

But then in 2007 he saw a shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper's victims, was up for sale.

He bought it, and enlisted the help of Jari Louhelainen, an expert in molecular biology, who used pioneering techniques to find DNA from her blood and that of the killer.

He said: "Here I am with the shawl and possibly the evidence to solve the most unsolvable murder in English criminal history. But where do I start? That was the big question.

"I enlisted the help of Jari and we embarked on a three-and-a-half year journey.

"When we discovered the truth it was the most amazing feeling of my entire life."

Mr Edwards said the discovery 126 years after the murders proves beyond doubt that Kosminski - one of the six key suspects commonly cited as the Ripper - was the actual killer.

He said the shawl had been taken by acting Sergeant Amos Simpson, who was on duty the night of Eddowes's death and wanted it for his wife.

But horrified at the blood-soaked wrap, she never wore it, and it was stored away and passed down through the generations until it came to auction seven years ago.

Mr Edwards said: "Thank God the shawl has never been washed, as it held the vital evidence."

The author, who said he was part-inspired to take up the search for the killer after watching the Johnny Depp film From Hell about the Ripper murders, said police had identified Kosminski as a suspect, but never had enough evidence to bring him to trial.

Kosminski was a Polish Jewish immigrant who, fleeing persecution in his Russia-controlled homeland, came with his family to England in 1881 and lived in Mile End Old Town.

He was admitted to a string of lunatic asylums, where he died in 1899 of gangrene in the leg.

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