Of course it’s click bait for all demos… AMATEUR RIPPEROLOGIST SOLVES JACK THE RIPPER MYSTERY. Every tabloid, newpaper, website, has been running something on this story, and I can’t be surprised; I clicked on the first one I saw. And the second. And after reading several reports on it, I realized that maybe this case isn’t exactly as airtight as hyperbolic headlines would have us believe.
Here’s what happened: a businessman named Russell Edwards watched the movie “From Hell”, spent some ‘mad money’ on a shawl allegedly found near Catherine Eddowes body, and had the cloth tested for DNA. Blood and semen on it was submitted to mitochondrial DNA testing and it matched a descendant of suspect Aaron Kosminski. Edwards also claims other testing matched descendants of Kosminski’s sister.
So that’s it. We have a winner (?) Kosminski looked good for the Ripper anyway, since he lived in the Whitechapel district, had severe mental illness, well known misogyny and the Ripper crimes stopped after he was committed.
But hold up, Ripperologists…this ain’t over till it’s over (and it probably never really will be, unless we invent time travel).
–First, why is Edwards submitting his findings to The Daily Mail (a tabloid) instead of a scientific journal?
–Second. why has there been no attempt to present the evidence for testing to other scientists? So far, we’re going just on the word of Edwards and Dr. Jari Louhelainen, a senior molecular biology lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University.
–Third, Mitochondrial DNA isn’t exactly a reliable indicator when we’re talking about how many people handled the scarf, and how many people share the DNA coding after such a sizable divide in time.
This is just getting started. Check out more detailed explanations of these reasons and more at Mysterious Universe.
And I always assumed it was David Warner.