Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888

by Edwards, Russell

  CONCLUSION

  It was half past two in the morning when Jari’s email came through.

  He had established a 100 per cent match of the genome of our suspect’s DNA to haplogroup T1a1. It sounded very impressive.

  I had to wait until 7 a.m. to get a layman’s explanation of what this means, and needless to say, I didn’t sleep. What Jari emailed then gave me another, huge, ‘wow’ moment: the Ripper’s haplogroup type is very typical in people of Russian Jewish ethnicity (with ‘Russian’ embracing Polish as well, as Jari later explained). With all the other DNA evidence we have, this is the cherry on the top of the cake: it matches Aaron Kosminski and his origins.

  I can’t pretend to understand the science of this amazing discovery, but as Jari explains it, in molecular evolution a haplogroup is a group of haplotypes (which are single nucleotide polymorphisms) which have the same mutations in all the haplotypes in the group, and therefore represent a clade, which is a group of people sharing the same common ancestry. In other words, DNA can be analysed to say which part of the world a person’s ancestors came from. The process Jari used to establish this haplogroup for Kosminski is the same one that tells him he is Finnish with a dash of Spanish farmers: but, of course, working on his own DNA was easier because it is fresh – not well over a hundred years old like the DNA extracted from the shawl.

  These mutations have different characteristics from the ones scientists use to track diseases, like cancer. They are not affected by disease, which is why they became common in a given population.

  Jari compared the DNA sequences from the isolated cells to the collection of DNA databases stored at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), based in Bethesda, USA. This database holds millions of sequences from various organisms, including humans. The answer took a while to compute, but the NCBI server came up with one perfect hit. This reference sequence, from someone who had exactly the same long sequence Jari had obtained from the shawl DNA, had only been entered a few weeks earlier, so once again luck was on our side.

  The hit was for mitochondrial haplotype T1a1; it matched our sequence perfectly, and the ethnicity of the person it belonged to was recorded as ‘Russian.’ Jari read it three or four times before it truly sank in.

  ‘I’d been dreading it would say something like “Jamaican” or “Polynesian” – then we would have had a problem.’

  We’d got the evidence we needed to name Kosminski definitively as the Ripper, with his perfect match with his descendant M, but, like Jari, I knew that if this geographic profiling had shown him to come from a completely different part of the world, we might have had to rethink. But, thankfully, it backs up everything we already know. We had our belt, now we had the braces.

  After the hit, Jari was also unable to go to bed, so wide-awake was he that he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep for thinking about it, so he carried on with the research. There we were, hundreds of miles apart, both with our minds racing. Jari knew that Russian Jews are known to have moved to central and eastern Europe, including Poland. A major study in the Annals of Human Genetics into mitochondrial DNA variability in Poles and Russians concluded that both countries have a similar DNA pattern, with all mtDNA haplogroups being represented equally in both nations (with haplogroup T1 very slightly more represented among the Poles). So when Jari came up with ‘Russian’, it embraces Polish, too, hence Jari’s text stating Russian ethnicity.

  As with everything on our quest, there were last-minute hitches, with a technical problem in the German lab which was customizing the oligonucleotides (short single-strands of DNA) for Jari, which he needed in order to carry out the laboratory analysis, making the DNA sequence (a string of text/letters) which he could then compare to the American database. Instead of a twenty-four hour turn around on our samples, we waited more than seventy-two hours. All edge-of-the-seat, nail-biting stuff for me, but I should be used to it by now . . . And we got the right result, so I’m not complaining.

  There was more good news a few days later, when Jari was able to deduce more from the DNA. He had been doing tests to establish the hair, skin and eye colour of the owner of the cells and he was able to tell me that our man definitely did not have red or blond hair, but that his hair colour was likely to be dark (brown or black). He could also, to my amazement, tell that there was some very preliminary evidence suggesting that our man had acne. This may not prove to be the case – the science in this area is new and Jari was cautious about overstating this – but the fact that it could be possible to deduce this kind of detail is astonishing. As the research in this area develops, who knows what we might be able to tell from the cells in the future.

  Israel Schwartz, the man I believe to be the best eye witness of a Ripper attack, had described the assailant he saw as having ‘hair, dark, and a small dark moustache’. So although these new results did not amount to proof, they increased my conviction that we had the right man.

  There is a feeling of deep satisfaction, knowing that I have solved the greatest murder mystery ever. It has taken a long time, there have been many lows as well as highs. I have come close to abandoning it more than once, and I have had moments of despair to counterpoint moments of wild jubilation. I have lost many hours of sleep over it, and my wife’s patience has been stretched. Finally, everything I have done has been vindicated.

  It has been an amazing journey. I have met some wonderful people along the way, and I have made good and lasting friendships. I have also discovered a great deal about myself, not least when, the day before Jari’s final results came in, something surfaced from my subconscious that has helped me understand why I felt such a deep connection with the Ripper’s victims, those unfortunate women who were forced to sell their bodies to pay for the basic necessities of food and a bed for the night. Yes, I had always empathized with them, partly because of my own short experience of being homeless. But this was something far bigger.

  I recalled a conversation I heard as a child, something I had filed away, perhaps because I did not understand it fully at the time, and perhaps, also, because I did not want to understand it. I was about six years old, because I know we were living in the two-up, two-down terraced house. My Auntie Enid was talking to Mum about my grandmother on my dad’s side, who I would only meet twice.

  ‘She was a prostitute, that’s what she was,’ Enid said, her voice dripping with disapproval. Auntie Enid was a vivid redhead, married to my dad’s brother Mickey, a milkman. She used to pop round from time to time to see Mum.

  I had honestly never thought about this revelation until I reached the final chapter of my Ripper search. Why did it come back to me? A chance remark from a female colleague, in which she likened being the mistress of a married man to being a prostitute, sparked an irrational anger in me. The two things are not the same, but why did it annoy me so much that she conflated them? It was while I was trying to work out the answer that the conversation between Mum and Auntie Enid came back to me.

  At the next opportunity I rang my mum, to check whether it was true. ‘Yes,’ she said, straight away. ‘Your grandmother was a prostitute.’

  She had abandoned her family when my dad was young, and he and his brothers and sisters had been brought up by Auntie Ruth, the oldest sister, because my grandfather worked driving lorries. There were six of them, and it must have been tough. When I was very small, when Mum and Dad were still living together, we lived on the tenth floor of a tower block, just a couple of streets away from the Liverpool docks. My paternal grandmother lived on the ground floor of the same block, but there was no contact between her and our family, and the only couple of occasions I met her were when we literally bumped into her, and she would say hello.

  Unlike my other grandmother, who was warm and loving and everything a grandmother should be, this woman was a stranger: I don’t even know her name. But I am still a descendant of hers, some of her genes are replicated in me, and this whole sense of family connection is something I have been made awar
e of through my scientific work tracking down the Ripper. I no longer have any connection with my dad’s side of the family: he emigrated to Australia twenty years ago and I have only seen him once since then, and we didn’t get on. But he, and this woman I never knew, are part of my ancestry, just as Catherine Eddowes is part of Karen Miller’s.

  With this personal knowledge, I find myself caring even more about the unfortunates, the women whose sad lifestyle made them prey for the man we have always called Jack the Ripper.

  That name will never go away. But now, thanks to the shawl, the scientific brilliance of Jari Louhelainen, and my determination, persistence and refusal to be sidetracked, we have his real name. He is no longer just a suspect. We can hold him, finally, to account for his terrible deeds. My search is over:

  Aaron Kosminski is Jack the Ripper.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would never have reached the end of this special journey without the help of so many people, most of whom have shown me kindness, support and understanding over the years.

  I initially wish to thank the experts and historians whose passion for the Ripper story gave me the grounding and information that helped me gain my first true understanding of the mystery. They are Paul Begg, Martin Fido, Stewart Evans and Donald Rumbelow.

  Without Dr Jari Louhelainen’s dedicated and painstaking forensic work on the shawl, my story wouldn’t be where it is today. I wish to acknowledge his professionalism, support, understanding and kindness, and his utmost patience with me, a non-scientist. To Karen Miller and ‘M’, without whose contributions we wouldn’t have had the DNA vital for the testing.

  Andy and Sue Parlour, for the many years in which they have given me the will to keep going: their support has been tremendous. To my literary agent, Robert Smith, my sounding board, to whom I would turn at any time of frustration, anxiety and elation. He has always been there for me. My special thanks to my publisher, Ingrid Connell at Sidgwick & Jackson, who took a chance on me when I was halfway through my story.

  To Jean Ritchie and John Bennett, who have provided me the friendliest and most nurturing help in order to understand my life, Alan McCormack and Paul Bickley at the Black Museum in Scotland Yard, David Melville-Hayes, Chris Phillips, Pat Marshall, Robert House, Diane Thalman and Darren Nicholhurst.

  To the institutions who were so helpful and informative: the National Archives in Kew, the London and Metropolitan Archives in Farringdon, the Public Record Office, the London Hospital Museum in Whitechapel, Cambridge University Library, Sotheby’s, Christie’s, the Huguenot Society, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Encyclopaedia Britannica and Lacy Scott & Knight Auctioneers.

  PICTURE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  All images © Evans Skinner archive excluding:

  Section One

  © Lacy Scott and Knight Auction Centre; © Mary Evans/Peter Higginbotham Collection; © Mary Evans Picture Library; courtesy of Library of the London School of Economics & Political Science, LSE/BOOTH/E/1/5

  Section Two

  courtesy of Andy and Sue Parlour; © Adam Wood and the Swanson family; © Mary Evans/Peter Higginbotham Collection; © Mary Evans/Peter Higginbotham Collection; © Dr Jari Louhelainen; © Dr Jari Louhelainen

  Integrated

  Stanford’s Map of Central London, digital reproduction © MAPCO 2006; Letter: courtesy of David Hayes

  Appendix

  London Metropolitan Archives, City of London

  APPENDIX

  INDEX

  Note: all street names are in London unless otherwise stated.

  Abberline, Inspector Frederick ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10

  Aberconway, Lady Christobel ref1

  Acton, Suffolk ref1

  Abrahams, Aaron, see Aaron Kosminski

  Albert Victor, Prince ref1

  Aldgate ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

  Aldgate High Street ref1, ref2, ref3

  Alexander II, Tsar of Russia ref1

  Anderson, Assistant Commissioner Dr (later Sir) Robert ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

  Christian faith of ref1

  Angel Alley ref1

  Angel, Miriam ref1

  Annals of Human Genetics journal ref1

  ‘Annie Sivey’, see Annie Chapman

  anti-Semitism ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

  Arabella Vincent Fine Art ref1

  Arnold, Superintendent Thomas ref1, ref2

  Ashcroft Road, Bow ref1

  Ashworth, Dawn ref1

  ASP Historical Research ref1

  Atlantic Productions television company ref1

  Autumn of Terror book ref1

  Aylmer, Alfred ref1

  Backchurch Lane ref1, ref2

  Badham, Sergeant Edward ref1

  Baker’s Row ref1, ref2

  Barnes, Ian, Professor of Molecular Palaeobiology ref1

  Barrett, Mike ref1

  Barrett, PC Thomas ref1, ref2

  Barnett, Joseph ref1, ref2, ref3

  Barrow Hill, Suffolk ref1

  Barton, Eric ref1

  Batty Street ref1

  Baxter, Wynne ref1

  Beck, Inspector Walter ref1

  Benelius, Nikaner ref1

  Bermondsey ref1, ref2, ref3

  Bermondsey Workhouse ref1

  Berner Street ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

  Best, John ref1

  Bethnal Green ref1, ref2

  Bevis Marks ref1

  Billingsgate market ref1

  Birkenhead ref1, ref2, ref3

  Bishopsgate ref1

  Bishopsgate Police Station ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

  Black Museum ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10,

  Black Museum: New Scotland Yard, The, book ref1

  Black Museum, Australia ref1

  Black Swan pub ref1

  Blackfriars ref1

  Blackfriars Bridge ref1

  Blackwell, Dr Frederick ref1

  Blackwood’s Magazine ref1

  Blenkinsop, James ref1

  Bond, Dr Thomas ref1, ref2, ref3

  his profile of the Whitechapel murderer ref1

  Boot, Oliver ref1

  Booth, Charles ref1, ref2, ref3

  Booth, William ref1

  ‘Borough Poisoner’, see George Chapman

  Bourton-on-the Water, Gloucestershire ref1, ref2

  Bowyer, Thomas ref1

  Brady Street ref1

  Bray, Simon ref1, ref2

  Brick Lane ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

  Bricklayers Arms pub ref1

  Bright’s disease ref1

  Britannia pub ref1, ref2

  Broad Street ref1

  Broadmoor ref1

  Bromley sick asylum ref1

  Brown, Dr Frederick Gordon ref1

  Brown’s Stable Yard ref1

  Brushfield Street ref1, ref2

  buccal cells ref1

  Buck’s Row ref1, ref2, ref3

  Buckingham Palace ref1, ref2

  Buckland, Richard ref1

  Bundy, Elizabeth ref1

  Bundy, John ref1

  Bundy, Ted ref1, ref2

  Buki, Mrs ref1

  Bull, William ref1

  Burdett Road ref1

  Bury St Edmunds ref1, ref2, ref3

  Burrell, Emily ref1

  Burridge, Mary ref1

  Burton, Harry ref1

  Butchers’ Row, Aldgate ref1

  Buxton Street, Mile End ref1

  Byfield, Sergeant James ref1

  Cable Street ref1, ref2

  Cadosch, Albert ref1

  Caine, Michael ref1

  Cambridge University Library ref1

  Cancer Research UK ref1, ref2

  ‘Canonical five’ Ripper murders, the ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  Carroll, Lewis ref1

  Carter Lane ref1

  Carthy, Mrs ref1

  Cassell’s Saturday Journal magazine ref1

  Caunt
er, Sergeant Eli ref1

  Central News Agency ref1, ref2

  Chamber Street ref1

  Chandler, Inspector Joseph ref1

  Chapman, Annie ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

  inquest into the death of ref1

  Chapman, George ref1, ref2

  Chapman, John ref1

  Chapman, Mark ref1

  Chappell, Mary ref1

  Charing Cross railway station ref1

  Chase, Richard Trenton ‘the Vampire of Sacramento’ ref1

  Cheapside ref1

  Cheltenham, Gloucestershire ref1

  Cheshunt, Hertfordshire ref1

  Chikatilo, Andrei ‘the Rostov Ripper’ ref1

  Christ Church, Spitalfields ref1, ref2, ref3

  Christie, John ref1

  Christie’s auctioneers ref1, ref2

  Church Passage ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  Church Road, Hove ref1

  City of London Corporation ref1

  City Press newspaper ref1, ref2

  Clacton-on-Sea, Essex ref1, ref2

  Clapp, George ref1

  Clarendon Villas, Hove ref1

  Clewer, Berkshire ref1

  Clugston, Jennifer ref1

  Cohen, David ref1, ref2, ref3

  Cohen, Jacob ref1

  Coldstream Guards ref1

  Coles, Frances ref1, ref2

  Collard, Inspector Edward ref1

  Collins, PC Edward ref1

  Colney Hatch Asylum ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8

  Commercial Road ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10

  Commercial Street ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

  Commercial Street Police Station ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

  common lodging houses ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10

  Conan Doyle, Arthur ref1, ref2