It turns out that Jack the Ripper wasn’t a man of science after all!
The identity of Jack the Ripper has been a mystery to authorities, and later the world of true crime fans. Everyone has been grappling with this case since, well, forever!
All sorts of claims have been made over the years, including suspicion that he was famous a French painter or Queen Victoria’s grandson.
People have claimed all kinds of suspects as the true identity of Jack the Ripper, and whoever the notorious serial killer was, they’re obviously long dead now.
Most of what we know about the suspect is what he did to five of his confirmed victims, and evidence from one of them has led an author to claim he’s “finally unmasked” the man behind the murders. Continue reading to unmask the truth!
The key is Jack The Ripper’s 4th victim: Catherine Eddowes!
Jack the Ripper’s 4th victim was a woman by the name of Catherine Eddowes, who was found deceased in September 1888, the same night the serial killer also slaughtered Elizabeth Stride.
At the scene of the crime was a shawl, which was taken home by one of the police officers and would later be auctioned off and purchased by a man named Russell Edwards.
He had it DNA tested, and the results showed blood and seminal fluid stains on the shawl, with the blood matching a descendant of none other than Catherine Eddowes.
Here’s where it gets interesting: It turns out that the stains were an exact match for a distant relative of one of the most notable Jack the Ripper suspects, Aaron Kosminski.
Russell Edwards ended up writing a book called “Naming Jack the Ripper,” in which he identified Kosminski as the notorious serial killer.
Now, he has a new book called Naming Jack the Ripper: The Definitive Reveal. In this one, he once again points the finger at Kosminski, writing that police believed him to have a “great hatred of women, especially prostitutes, and had strong homicidal tendencies.”
But this DNA evidence has been disputed before
The claims of getting DNA evidence from the shawl have been contested throughout the years. In 2014, a Jack the Ripper expert named Andrew Smith said that in order to solve the case, forensic evidence was required.
But he claimed there wasn’t any because it was “doubtful” that any DNA evidence on the shawl hadn’t become contaminated over time. Then, Mick Reed of the University of New England wrote that the authenticity of the shawl should also be questioned.
Edwards requested that Dr Jari Louhelainen of Liverpool John Moore’s University carry out forensic analysis on the shawl, but at the time of the original DNA work, The Independent reported that several experts said there had been a “serious DNA error.”
They claim he made an ‘error of nomenclature’ which, if corrected, would link the DNA to over 99% of people of European descent. Do you think the Ripper case is closed, or does his true identity still remain a mystery to you?
Until now, Hyam Hyams was believed to be the man responsible for the murders
Until now, it was believed that Hyam Hyams was the man responsible for the murders of at least 6 of the women in or near Whitechapel, east London, between August and November 1888.
Martha Tabram, Polly Nichols, Elisabeth Stride, Annie Chapman, Kate Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly were disadvantaged women who had their throats cut and bodies slaughtered in horrific attacks that shocked the entire country.
Ms. Baxton Horton, whose grandfather worked on Jack The Ripper’s investigation, examined medical records and witness descriptions of the person seen with female victims before they were killed, leading her to Mr. Hyams.
He was a cigar maker who lived in the area where the atrocities were committed and was an alcoholic and epileptic who was in and out of mental asylums throughout his life. His job indicated that he was probably skilled in using a knife.
The man had a record of repeatedly assaulting his wife, fearing she was cheating on him, and was ultimately arrested after attacking her and his mother with a “chopper”.
Eyewitnesses described Mr Hyams as a man in his mid-thirties with an irregular gait, a stiff arm, and bent knees.
Ms Bax Horton uncovered that the medical notes of Hyams, who was 35 years old in 1888, recorded an injury that left him incapable of extending or bending his left arm.
Why else was Hyams the main suspect?
As we mentioned, medical records revealed that Hyams had an inability to straighten his knees and an irregular gait with asymmetric foot-dragging. He also had the most severe form of epilepsy, with seizures on a regular basis.
Medical notes, taken from various asylums and infirmaries, revealed that his physical and mental decline overlapped with Jack the Ripper’s slaying period, escalating between his shattering his left arm in February 1888 and his committal in September 1889.
Also worth noting is that Hyam Hyams’ files said what the eyewitnesses stated: that he had a peculiar gait.
Why all this frenzy?
Three of Jack the Ripper’s victims had their internal organs extracted, leading to prior police theories that the culprit had a background in human anatomy. Letters mocking investigators and claiming to be from the “killer” first used the phrase “Jack the Ripper.”
Most were thought to be shams, but the name stuck. Law enforcement never established how many victims there were in total, and investigators examining 11 murders in Spitalfields and Whitechapel between 1888 and 1891 weren’t able to link them to the ones in 1888.
Pinning down the identity of Britain’s most infamous serial killer has occupied the minds of conspiracy theorists and historians alike for many decades.
And over the years, fanatics have debated over the evidence to come up with a list of potential killers that range from the credible to the unthinkable.
Some believed it was a Russian con artist, others an Irish-American imposter, and even the eldest son of Edward VII have all been accused of being the man who, for one summer in 1888, brought terror to the core of London’s East End before vanishing without a trace.
What do “Ripperologists” have to say about all this?
Many Ripperologists aren’t so certain that this case has been solved.
The report has generated many skeptics, some of whom have noted that the laboratory analysis hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal yet and that there was no mitochondrial DNA test, which gets passed down from mothers to their children and presents much less of a unique identifier than nuclear DNA.
Many folks can share similar mitochondrial DNA signatures.
Other critics refute the notion that the police officer was even at the crime scene the night of the Eddowes murder and say that the shawl may have been contaminated over the years since many members of the Eddowes family have held it.
Besides this, this isn’t the first time DNA evidence allegedly cracked the case. American crime novelist Patricia Cornwell declared that DNA samples found on the letters sent by Ripper to Scotland Yard matched those of painter Walter Sickert.
And a 2006 study by an Australian scientist named Ian Findlay took DNA from the saliva on the letters and concluded that it was likely that the sender was a woman.
So, even with all this news, it’s highly unlikely that all the talk on Jack the Ripper’s identity will suddenly just stop. Especially since there are many movies still surfacing regarding the matter, including this one starring Johnny Depp: From Hell
So what do you think about all these claims regarding Jack the Ripper? Be sure to let us know in the comments section. And if you liked this post, we highly recommend also reading: 8 Famous Celebrity-Inspired Songs That Will Shock You
