DNA and Jack the Ripper
You have to love it.
Even the possibility that DNA could solve the coldest of cold cases just has to make a genetic genealogist smile.
And though there are a fair number of as-yet-unanswered question, you just have to love even the idea that we might now know who Jack the Ripper was … thanks to DNA.
Jack the Ripper, you recall, is the nickname given to a serial killer who murdered at least five women in London’s Whitechapel area in 1888. As many as 11 other murders, up to 1891, were thought to be the work of the same killer, but only five in 1888 were considered certain to be his/her work.1
The reports over the weekend that the case file might now be marked “closed” come in advance of the publication of a book by a man who is a self-described “armchair detective.”
British businessman Russell Edwards, whose book Naming Jack The Ripper is about to be released for sale, wrote an article yesterday for the London newspaper, The Daily Mail, in which he claims that DNA has identified the killer: “Aaron Kosminski, a Polish Jew who had fled to London with his family, escaping the Russian pogroms, in the early 1880s.”2
Edwards said that he acquired a blood-stained shawl that was supposed to have been found near the body of one of the certain victims. Reportedly, the shawl was originally in the possession of one of the investigating officers and was passed down through his family. It was loaned to Scotland Yard’s crime museum but not displayed because of questions about its provenance. After the family reclaimed the shawl in 2001, it was put up for auction and purchased by Edwards.3
The author noted that he spoke to a representative of the Crime Museum who said the chief investigator on the Jack the Ripper case always believed that Kosminski was the killer. There wasn’t enough evidence to convict him, but he was kept under police surveillance until he was committed to a mental institution where he spent the rest of his life.4
With the shawl, Edwards wrote, he needed four things to come up with an answer: (a) adequate DNA samples from the shawl; (b) a descendant of the victim whose blood was believed to be on the shawl; (c) a descendant of a member of the Kosminski family — the suspect left no descendants; and (d) a scientist who could do all the work and analysis.
The scientist he worked with was Dr. Jari Louhelainen, now associated with Liverpool John Moores University: “a Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biology at LJMU, as well as Associate Professor of Biochemistry at University of Helsinki, one of the world’s top universities. He has two major lines of research – mammalian/medical genetics and forensics.”5 His genetic credentials are impressive.
Edwards said Louhelainen was able to extract DNA from two different people from the shawl. The scientist also tested DNA samples from two people: a known descendant of the victim, whose identity has been widely reported in the media and was featured in a documentary on Jack the Ripper; and a descendant of a member of the Kosminski family.6
And here, from a genetic genealogy point, is where we run into the snag. Edwards wrote: “Eventually, we tracked down a young woman whose identity I am protecting – a British descendant of Kosminski’s sister, Matilda, who would share his mitochondrial DNA.”7
Now he reports that the tests of this individual against the other DNA from the shawl is “a perfect match.” But without the identity of that person we’re left to take the author’s word for it. And the author has a vested interest in being able to say he has the answer to this 126-year-old mystery.
Now it’s also true that Louhelainen himself wrote for the newspaper that he was satisfied that “we have established, as far as we possibly can, that Aaron Kosminski is the culprit.” And, he said, the extracted DNA was “of a type known as the haplogroup T1a1, common in people of Russian Jewish ethnicity. I was even able to establish that he had dark hair.”8
Is that enough, without knowing the genealogy of the woman tested?
Not for a genealogist, of course, but…
SOURCES
Image: “With the Vigilance Committee in the East End: A Suspicious Character” from The Illustrated London News, 13 October 1888, via Wikimedia Commons
- Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.com), “Jack the Ripper,” rev. 7 Sep 2014. ↩
- Russell Edwards, “Jack the Ripper unmasked,” The Daily Mail online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk : accessed 6 Sep 2014). ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- See “Dr. Jari Louhelainen,” Liverpool John Moores University (http://www.ljmu.ac.uk : accessed 6 Sep 2014). ↩
- Edwards, “Jack the Ripper unmasked.” ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Dr. Jari Louhelainen, “Shawl that nailed Polish lunatic Aaron Kosminski and the forensic expert that made the critical match,” The Daily Mail online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk : accessed 6 Sep 2014). ↩
I question the statement about the T1a1 haplogroup being common in people of Russian Jewish ancestry. I don’t spot any geographic trend in my database of complete mtDNA sequences from GenBank. T1a1 is found in many European countries, but perhaps there is a specific subclade that was not mentioned in the news item.
I would also like to see more about that, Ann.
This whole issue is very fraught. The scientist seems to have genuine expertise in his field, but, it would seem, none in historical research. The author of the book has no scientific expertise, and, it would seem, little in rigorous historical research. I wouldn’t be surprised if the scientist is regretting his involvement, given the publicity, but who knows?
There are many issues, but one that seems to have had no airing, is the one about the suspect’s hair colour. According to the admissions registers of the workhouse and/or asylum he was in, he had blond hair. I must say I only have this from secondary sources, but the knowledge has been around for years. Moreover surviving photos of his sister and other relatives show blonde hair so it would seem likely that the workhouse records are right.
And yet the scientist claims his DNA suspect had dark hair.
Now that the book has started hitting the bookshelves, perhaps we’ll get some answers to some of these questions!
I guess we’ll have to wait for the book to be released, and then we can analyze the bejeesus out of it, right?
Somehow I suspect building buzz for the book is exactly why the article appeared yesterday…
For me, even more fundamental than the question of the identity of the descendant whose DNA was tested or the results of the DNA testing is the doubts around the chain of evidence. It’s the first thing that popped into my head when I read “…was supposed to have been found…”. In other words, without verification that the evidence is actually what it’s purported to be, this author’s whole argument is based upon speculation. There’s reasonable doubt before you even start testing the DNA on the scarf itself.
But the presence of the known victim’s DNA on the item might supply that link.
-I also saw this reference today, about this shawl.
I googled, and found this interesting website/blog:
http://www.casebook.org/victims/eddowes.html
-appears to be at least other man of possible Russian/jew descent.
-not much initially saw of a shawl of the victim.
-per the above website victim left their lodgings to obtain monies from her daughter – appears this did not happen.
-was it blood or possible semen located off shawl that was DNA tested?
-could have victim had a “trist” before her death, thus causing this DNA to befound? As she was found earlier found drunk – monies obtained some how?
–just some thoughts..Feel more testing of evidence needs to be done.
GJ
We certainly have the unanswered questions… it’ll be interesting to see the reports after the book goes on sale.
“questions about its provenance.” indeed. I keep reading stories in that same newspaper that are all interesting, and seem groundbreaking, but I am always not able to verify due to peoples names not being revealed. I would have wanted to see a close autosomal DNA match, not just a haplogroup…
Autosomal isn’t the way to go here; mitochondrial DNA was what was used.
This just makes me want to know more and ask more questions.
I’m sure that what the author really hopes is that you’ll want to run out and buy the book!
As well as questions about the provenance of the shawl the way that the DNA testing has been done also raises questions. For ancient DNA research strict protocols have to be followed. The testing has to be done in sterile conditions in a special lab, and the results have to be replicated by testing the samples independently in two different labs. From the information provided in the Mail this does not appear to have been done. Identifying Jack the Ripper through DNA testing would surely be the subject of a career-making paper in Science or Nature. One therefore has to wonder why the research has been published in the Mail (a newspaper not renowned for the accuracy of its scientific reporting at the best of times) to coincide with the publication of a new book. There’s an excellent article in the Independent with a quote from Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys which might be of interest:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/has-jack-the-rippers-identity-really-been-revealed-using-dna-evidence-9717036.html
There surely are a number of unanswered questions, here. The one thing that leads me to think this could be true, however, is the fact that the person “fingered” by the DNA testing isn’t extraordinary in any way: it’s not a royal, it’s not a new suspect, it’s the most likely of all those who were suspects at the time. There’s nothing surprising about the result. We do have to wait and see what happens, particularly in terms of scientific review, after the book is published… but I’m more inclined to adopt an it-could-be attitude with this than I would be if the report was that, say, Queen Victoria’s grandson was the killer.
I think this a good example of where DNA testing in combination with genealogical evidence can solve such mysteries but I’m not at all convinced in this particular case. Here is an extract from an article in today’s Times:
“However, Ripper experts, known as Ripperologists, have cast doubt on the claim, which is the latest in a century of claims about the supposed identity of the serial killer.
Richard Cobb, who runs Jack the Ripper conventions and tours, said that the shawl had been present in the same room as two of Eddowes’s descendants for three days at a conference in Wolverhampton in 2007, which could explain how her family mitochondrial DNA had come to be on the shawl.
“The shawl has been openly handled by loads of people and been touched, breathed on, spat upon,” Mr Cobb explained.
“My DNA is probably on there. What’s more, Kosminski is likely to have frequented prostitutes in the East End of London.
“If I examined that shawl, I’d probably find links to 150 other men from the area.”
It has never been proven that the shawl was found next to Eddowes. Donald Rumbelow, a Ripper expert who runs Ripper tours in East London, said that it was not included in a police list of items found with her body.’
Yep, unanswered questions for sure. Guess we’ll all have to buy the book and see if there are answers anywhere.
DNA evidence and chain of custody issues aside, we could easily imagine that Kosminski and other young men visited prostitutes in the area, including Eddowes. Even if we believe mitochondrial DNA links Eddowes to the shawl and the shawl to Kosminski, can we really know when the encounter took place? If she wore her shawl during ‘business hours,’ then semen could have easily transferred onto it from a number of clients, including Kosminski.
Kosminski was in the neighborhood, was a suspect at the time, and was probably mentally unstable – although I’m hesitant to attribute modern understandings of mental illness onto historical figures – but I also feel as though it’s worth mentioning that he was a Polish-Jewish immigrant who may have had a history of unusual or erratic behavior. That alone could have made him a suspect. We might expect the actual guilty party to have been a suspect, but then again, how could an immigrant who acts oddly have not been on a suspect list? I’d think everyone in the neighborhood would have pointed fingers at the guy.
There are a lot of interesting coincidences that might add up to evidence, and I’m eager to learn more, for sure. I don’t think there’s enough right now based on the articles to conclude that Kosminski committed the murders or even the murder of Eddowes, but this is good start.
And it’s sure a good start in getting people to buy this book, isn’t it? 🙂
DNA was barely identified when I was in college, but I have tried to keep up. I also have degrees in English literature and credits for degrees I didn’t try to finish from education, history and religious studies. I read a lot and make a lot of odd connections.
Jewish emigrants in many areas were “rag men,” meaning they collected any sort of trash, often fabric, to be recycled. I find this a possible solution for the two DNA samples, if they are accurately attributed.
I find Patricia Cornwall’s book the most logical and scientific “guess.”
We’ll have to wait and see if there’s any peer-reviewed scientific write up of this case.