Aaron Kosminski is believed to have been the world’s most famous serial killer.
A Polish madman called Aaron Kosminski has been identified as Jack the Ripper, after a scientist used cutting edge technology to find the perpetrator of a series of grisly London murders.
Dr Jari Louhelainen, an expert in historic DNA, was asked to study a shawl found with Catherine Eddowes, believed to be the Ripper’s penultimate victim.
Kosminski was a suspect around time of the murders having been committed to a mental asylum, and now a piece of clothing has pointed the finger firmly at a man who moved to London from Poland in 1881.
Dr Louhelainen is quoted as saying: “It has taken a great deal of hard work, using cutting-edge scientific techniques which would not have been possible five years ago.
“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, a hairdresser, is believed to have started to suffer mental problem around four years after arriving in Whitechapel.
The Jack The Ripper murders began in 1888. Between five and 11 murders of women in, and around, the Whitechapel area have been linked to the Ripper, with the last taking place in February 1891.
Kosminski was placed in Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum later that same year, and remained in asylums until his death in 1919 at the age of 53.
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