If you ask him why he is working in two such different fields he explains that the methods used in medical genetics are very similar to those used in forensic science, so it is not difficult for him to juggle the two disciplines. There are obvious advantages as well, as he has brought quite a few methods which are used in medical genetics into his forensic work: medical genetics is a well-funded field and at the edge of scientific discovery, whereas forensics lag behind. In his résumé on the LJMU website, his expertise in the forensic area includes ‘determination of age of forensic samples’, ‘ applications of Next Generation sequencing for forensics’, ‘forensic imaging applications’ and ‘human identification using novel genetic methods’.
He came to England for a post-doctoral position in cancer genetics, based at Cancer Research UK in Leeds, and his wife started working at Leeds University. In 2002 their second daughter, Sophie, was born, and they moved to Bradford, which was a good base for their outdoor activities and close enough to Leeds to commute. Soon after, Jari took up a post at Oxford University, and moved from there to Liverpool John Moores University because the journey to and from Oxford was difficult and time-consuming.
Jari spends four nights a week in Liverpool and the weekends with his family in Bradford. He works on unsolved forensic cold cases for Interpol, Western Australia Police and Merseyside Police, and he is one of the supervisors for a Roman dig in Chester, the site where the Cistercian Poulton Abbey once stood. There are hundreds of skeletons on the site from the medieval period, so this is a long-term project for him. The aim is to establish who these people were, and where they came from. He is also involved in a research project analysing remains from the Mary Rose, the warship from the reign of Henry VIII. He was recruited to the TV programme when Robert Napper asked a contact of his who would be the best person, and was told, ‘If there’s anyone in the world who can do it, it’s Jari.’
Even on that first day when we met for the TV programme, I picked up on his dry sense of humour: there was a funny moment when on camera I was asked to hand him a bag that was supposed to contain the shawl: in fact, because the shawl was still carefully preserved between the sheets of cardboard, the bag was full of my socks and undies.
Jari maintained a very professional approach during the testing and filming, but I could sense that, like me, he felt the work he was being asked to do, in one day, was superficial and scientifically speaking a waste of time. But although he was not particularly interested in the Jack the Ripper story, Jari was fascinated by the possibility of a piece of fabric as old as the shawl which clearly contained some information in its stains. He told me, that same day, that we should take things further, away from the cameras.
So a few days after the filming I telephoned Jari to ask about the cost of a really serious set of tests. They were substantial. On the spur of the moment I said no, in that case I did not want to do them. I had the feeling I have had so often on this quest: I had hit a brick wall, and I did not want to throw a lot more money at it. As so often before I told myself, ‘Maybe you are not meant to do this. You’ve had a crack, it’s not working, let it be.’ I was disappointed, but as usual told myself to get on with the rest of my life and put Jack the Ripper behind me.
But the following week Jari called me back, saying that he could do these tests in his own time for me, free, as long as he could write a paper on his findings when it was all over. I was delighted to accept: the very fact that he wanted to do this made me feel that, if a scientist of Jari’s standing was willing to do this work, there must be a real chance that we would find something. Suddenly, from that one phone call, my enthusiasm was back to full strength.
I realized this was probably just another research project to Jari, but we agreed that this was going to be our project, with no outside interference. Our partnership was established, informally, and from then on Jari joined me in the pursuit of the Ripper, even though he probably did not at this stage appreciate the full implications of what we were embarking on.
I met Jari at his laboratory at LJMU on the morning of 14 June 2011 and he gave me a full explanation as to what he was going to do during the primary analysis. This included taking a strand from one end of the shawl to try and establish a date when the shawl was made, as well as special photographic analysis under different lighting conditions to establish what the stains on the shawl were.
I left the shawl with him, and because I was on Merseyside I went off to spend the day with my mum. Jari spent the day examining the shawl using different forensic light sources, outside the usual visible light range, and also using special photography equipment, including a camera which was able to see in the infrared region.
Jari took the shawl into a special room which has a sterile, dust-free vacuum environment, with an extractor to take out all contaminants, and which can also be blacked-out to make it free of any unwanted light contamination. Bloodstains on floral (as in the shawl) or other complex patterns are often undetectable in normal conditions. In the vacuum room, the hunt for previously undetected bloodstains started with a set of different infrared filters ranging from 720–950 nanometres (nm).
Normal human vision is in the region of 400–700 nm. This is called ‘visible light’. The same applies to light sources we use: the main output from standard bulbs or other light sources are in the visible light region. Taking a photograph with a normal camera (film or digital) results in a photograph which corresponds closely with what we see with our own eyes. Normal digital cameras have an in-built filter on top of the image sensor which blocks the infrared region (over 700 nm) and camera lenses usually block most of the invisible light regions, including ultraviolet (UV – less than 350–400 nm), which helps the photographs look as natural as possible.
In forensics, using non-visible light for recording something unseen by the naked eye is a very useful tool. The infrared light can reveal hidden writing, or inks and dyes which have been obscured by other substances. For example analysis of old paintings can find the previously erased brushwork of sketches beneath the visible surface. This type of photography uses a camera which is sensitive to infrared but does not capture the visible or UV light. In other words, the camera records light well above the 700 nm wavelength and all visible light is blocked.
Another type of special photography is ‘reflective UV photography’ which uses a UV light source together with a UV-blocked camera. So, the camera cannot actually see UV light at all, but if that light makes something emit fluorescence in the visible region (above 400 nm), it will record it. We are all probably familiar with the visual effects of UV lights, usually for theatrical or display purposes, where they are sometimes used in concerts or nightclubs. Our white shirts glow brightly under this light because the shirt contains materials or compounds known as ‘phosphors’ which fluoresce under such conditions. UV light is used in forensics because many natural substances, including those from the human body, also contain phosphors and will fluoresce in a variety of ways. For example, semen stains will emit a bright fluorescence and can be recorded using this method. This is called a presumptive test, a first step in identifying substances, as there can be other molecules present (both natural and artificial) which will fluoresce as well.
Using this special equipment, the shawl itself looked pattern-less and quite light-coloured overall. The infrared light also revealed a previously undetected, very dark, slim, almost rectangular mark in the middle of the larger stain, the one in the middle of the shawl. This pattern was very clearly visible, with high contrast, on both sides of the shawl, even though the actual stain itself was barely visible to the naked eye. It did not correspond to the visible patterns on the shawl. Jari speculated that this mark could be blood, but as it was rectangular, it was quite unusual. Jari still does not know what this is, but he speculates that the shawl could have been pressed with a blunt object but is mystified as to why it left a mark. If it was oil or tar it would be easily identified.
With the reflective UV he coul
d not see anything fluorescent on the reverse side of the shawl; however, when it was turned over he could see a set of fluorescent stains which were very possibly semen. It is known that urine and saliva fluoresce under ultraviolet light but they tend to give off an orange hue, whereas seminal fluorescence is usually greenish. The stains Jari spotted had a clear green cast. When moving further towards the other end, a set of darker stains could be seen. Again, in a typical forensic analysis these would be candidates for bloodstains.
When I got back to the lab at 4.30 p.m. Jari told me that in his opinion the shawl held bloodstains that were ‘consistent with arterial blood spatter caused by slashing’. He said the distribution of the stains was key to this finding of ‘slashing’: his experience working with crime enforcement agencies and training crime scene investigators meant he recognized the pattern. The white spots that I, in my ignorance, had put down to the ageing process were in fact blood spatter. He explained to me that the pattern is consistent with medium-velocity blood spatter, coming from an angle that shows the blood was not just dropped on the shawl. Spatter like this is often involved with beating or stabbing. High-velocity spatter could be caused by shooting, and low-velocity by blood dripping onto the object. There was no evidence of dripping on the shawl, and Jari concluded that the blood spatter was ‘compatible with the details of the killing’. I was thrilled to hear this.
He also said that one of the other stains was fluorescing under his lights in a way that made him think it could be semen, although he was, as a true scientist, very non-committal and cautious.
As I heard his words, delivered in his unemotional way, I felt a surge of excitement, my heart racing. Of course, the presence of blood could not be definitely proved using just photography. Of course, it could be animal blood, it may not be as old as 1888, there were all sorts of possibilities. And, of course, Jari had to do more testing before we would know anything definitive. But it looked to me, the layman, very promising.
He took me into the scientific vacuum room to see for myself. I was kitted out head to toe in a plastic boiler suit and goggles, so that I felt as if I belonged on the set of Ghostbusters. We looked at the shawl with the naked eye under normal lighting conditions and then I put on the goggles, which made the room pitch black. Then Jari showed me how the stains showed up under different lighting: it felt spooky and weird. There was one larger (approximately 2–3 inches in diameter) stain in the middle and smaller stains near one end of the shawl. Some other stains were also detected near the edges of the shawl, and Jari pointed out to me odd patterns not visible to the naked eye.
As I drove home down the motorway that evening the words ‘blood spatter consistent with slashing’ played through my brain. I knew what the Ripper had done to the body of Catherine Eddowes: it all seemed to fit in. It felt like we were on track, things were going in the right direction at last. But I had to contain my exhilaration. There was nobody who would understand my excitement. The only person on the journey with me was Jari, and he was a dispassionate scientist who at this stage did not understand my sense of urgency.
Now that we had started, I was very keen to get more tests done as soon as possible, but because Jari was doing the work on the shawl alongside his regular workload, I had to be patient – and, of course, I understood his problems, especially when one of his daughters was unwell, and when his car was smashed into by another driver. But every time the work had to be set back, the frustration for me was intense. The delay was torture.
It was in the New Year, 20 January 2012, that I went back to Liverpool with the shawl again, this time travelling by train, leaving my home in Hertfordshire at 4.30 a.m. It didn’t bother me getting up so early: I was so excited it was hard to sleep. I delivered the shawl to the lab at 9 a.m., and again left Jari to get on with it. It was a grim, rainy, cold day, and I had nothing to do but to wander around Liverpool. I went to the Tate Liverpool, I went to John Lewis and every other large store, just to get into the warm and out of the rain. I texted Jari after a few hours:
‘Are you ready yet?’
‘No, another hour.’
That’s how it went all afternoon.
It was 5 p.m. when I was finally summoned back to the lab, and the first thing I saw, and which sent my spirits soaring, was a big grin on Jari’s face.
‘How did you get on?’ I asked.
‘Look at this,’ he said.
He showed me one of the large stains on the shawl and told me it contained ‘evidence of split body parts’, and then he said some very encouraging words. ‘This would be very difficult to forge.’
He had used different equipment, and the day was not an unqualified success. The initial presumptive blood tests proved to be inconclusive, the main reason being that the dyes used in the shawl inhibited any firm result. He took swabs and tested for an enzyme method reaction (known as the KM method), which works well with fresh samples. It is the first stage of analysis and Jari had explained to me that finding a positive trace for blood was a long shot due to the age of the stains, but it was worth performing the process. If Jari could establish the presence of blood it would give him something to work from, and hopefully DNA material could be extracted and we could move on to the next stage. If not, we would have to use other, more complicated, methods. Unfortunately this technique did not work for us, but all was not lost: there was more work he could do. (In fact, science moves so fast that there is already another process available today which would probably have worked for us.)
I’d been reading up about the significance of DNA ‘fingerprints’, and although I didn’t understand everything Jari said, I knew some of the science. A genome is all of a living thing’s genetic material, and contains the entire set of hereditary instructions for building, running and maintaining an organism, and passing life on to the next generation. The genome of an individual will contain forty-six chromosomes, inherited half from the father and half from the mother. The genome also contains genes, which are packaged in those chromosomes and have the specific characteristics of the organism: a little like a Russian doll, with smaller dolls inside bigger dolls, the genome is divided into chromosomes, those chromosomes in turn contain genes, and the genes are made of DNA. Every chromosome has its own specific genes. For example, our chromosome 13 has several hundred genes and one of them is the breast cancer gene BRCA2. On the other hand, chromosome 15 has a gene which affects our eye colour.
Each one of earth’s species has its own distinctive genome: the dog genome, the wheat genome, the genomes of the frog and so on. Genomes belong to species, but they also belong to individuals. Though unique to each individual, a human genome is still recognizably human. The genome differences between two people are much smaller than the genome differences between people and close animal relatives such as chimpanzees, but unless you are an identical twin, your genome is still different from that of every other person on earth – in fact, it is different from that of every other person who has ever lived, although, because you inherit so many genes from each of your parents, and thus from your ancestors, there are many points in common, and it is the exact combination that is unique to you. In modern paternity and maternity tests, elements of a child’s DNA can be compared with that of a putative parent (usually the father) to detect if traces of their DNA are present in the child’s sample.
For standard forensic cases, the genomic DNA is used, as in most cases the DNA is fresh and has not had time to become fragmented, or broken. When looking at DNA which is old and therefore fragmented, the amount of the genomic DNA available is often so low that it cannot be reliably analysed. However, all human cells still have something called mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is present in the mitochondria, small structures in cells that generate energy for the cell to use as food. Unlike genomic DNA which is created from both parents, mtDNA is passed down the generations exclusively through the female line, via the mother’s ovum, because the mitochondria in sperm is destroyed during fertilization. Thus
the mtDNA of a female will be passed completely intact down the line of direct female descendants for many, many generations.
Forensic laboratories occasionally use mtDNA comparison to identify human remains, and especially to identify older unidentified skeletal remains, and it is so consistent that it has been employed on ancient, often extinct, animal remains to establish evolutionary links into the present day. Statistically, mtDNA is not as powerful as genomic DNA because it is only a small strand, but it still gives a high probability for human identification. The advantage of mtDNA is that it is much more abundant than the genomic DNA. In each human cell we have one copy of genomic DNA but in the same cell we can have a thousand copies of mtDNA, which means that even if the genomic DNA has degraded, there should still be enough mtDNA which can be analysed.
Jari explained that further tests on the suspected bloodstains required a different and more effective method of extraction than swabbing, to ensure that the original DNA material could be pulled from the very depths of the stains. He used his own in-house technique which we called ‘vacuuming’ – this is not the scientific word, but a description that helped me understand the process. Jari’s method used a modified sterile pipette filled with a liquid ‘buffer’ which is injected into the material for testing. The ‘buffer’ dissolves material trapped in the weave of the fabric without damaging any cells and the pipette sucks it out rapidly. The process of injection and suction takes place in a flash. On an item like the shawl, this would be much more suitable than swabbing, which picks up all sorts of surface contamination such as dust or, worse, dead skin cells from any number of sources – just think how many hands the shawl had passed through in its life.
This vacuuming method ensured that specimens collected would not contain just superficial contamination, but would suck out material like dried cells and biological debris from cells that had been trapped in the shawl for a considerable time. Eventually, Jari was able to confirm that the stains on the shawl contained human genetic material as they gave positive signals for both human genomic and mitochondrial DNA.
Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888 Page 15