Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Alan Moore, Comics, eddie campbell, entertainment, from hell, jack the ripper, william gull

From Poland – The Identity Of Jack The Ripper Finally Revealed

Published Sun, 07 Sep 2014 10:00:20 -0500

Last updated Sun, 07 Sep 2014 10:32:03 -0500

No, it is not William Gull. Not that many, and certainly not Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, actually thought that it was.

But a Ripperologist has finally solved the mystery of the identity of Jack The Ripper, the world's first recognised serial killer, working the streets of Victorian London, and starting a whole industry of fascination.

Inspired by the From Hell movie, London businessman Russell Edwards was able to buy a shawl believed to have been found at the scene of one of the murders. He employed a DNA specialist to identify midochondrial DNA still on the shawl, matched to the victim Catherine Eddowes thanks to a blood sample from her great grand daughter to confirm the provenance of the shawl.

He also placed its origin as Eastern Europe, where suspect Aaron Kosminski, a Polish Jew who had escaped the Russian pogroms with his family, hailed from.

They were then able to find survival cells of ejaculate on the shawl and compared midochondrial from a sample from a descendant of Kosminski's sister.

And got a 100% match.

A hairdresser in London, Kosminski was committed to mental asylums and died in Leavesden Asylum from gangrene at the age of 53, in 1919. A prime suspect of the police, he was kept under surveillance until his committal, but not enough evidence was available to even attempt a conviction.

Until now.

Any chance of a further From Hell epilogue? To bring us up to date? You can read plenty of Ripperologist dissertations about the suspect here.

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