Jack the Ripper breakthrough as DNA ‘finally unmasks serial killer after 136 years’

This is the face of the world’s most infamous serial killer according to an author who has been studying the case for close to 30 years.

Ripper researcher Russell Edwards has used new facial remodelling technology to create this CGI black and white image of how the killer would have looked at the time.

It was after Mr Edwards used from the shawl of one of his victims to “prove” that Jack the Ripper was actually Aaron Kosminski, a Jewish immigrant from Poland who was one of the key suspects at the time of the horrific Whitechapel murders.

Now, in a second book on the case, Mr Edwards claims not only to have conclusively identified the Ripper, but also the reason why he mutilated his victims in such a way and how he evaded justice.

Jack the Ripper butchered and murdered at least five women in the Whitechapel area of east London over just a four month period from August to November 1888.

Three victims had internal organs removed, which led to a theory that the killer had some anatomical or surgical skills.

Police actually investigated the brutal killings of 11 women, mainly prostitutes, from April 1888 to February 1891, known as the Whitechapel murders.

It is widely agreed that the third to the seventh of them, known as the Canonical Murders, were definitely carried out by the Ripper.

Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly were killed over nine weeks from August to November 1888.

They all had their throats cuts, post-mortem injuries, including to the vagina, and body parts were taken from Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly. So, how did Mr Edwards “confirm” Kosminski as the Ripper?

PC Watkins was the officer who discovered the heavily mutilated corpse of the Ripper’s fourth victims Catherine Eddowes on September 30 1888 on a pavement in Mitre Square.

Her head was nearly severed and her nose cut open. She was his second victim on the same night. A silk shawl she had was covered in blood.

Nearly 120 years later in 2007, Mr Edwards, a north London businessman, found the alleged shawl on auction in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

Curious, but sceptical, he bought it and found it remarkably preserved with what appeared to be blood and even semen stains still on the garment.

It was later established that as her body was taken to the morgue, acting Police Sergeant Amos Simpson took it as a somewhat macabre “gift” for his wife, Jane.

Although she never wore it, it remained in the family for generations and was auctioned off by Sergeant Simpson’s great-great-nephew David Melville-Hayes.

Mr Edwards was surprised that such an ornate silk scarf, decorated with flowers would have been Ms Eddowes’, as she was a poverty-stricken drunk.

Yet, the design and dyes used appeared to be like those of the time produced in St Petersburg. This caused Mr Edwards to consider if it could have actually been a possession of Ripper suspect Kosminski, who hailed from the Russian empire.

Could he have left it at the scene, he wondered. So began a lengthy series of DNA tests on the presumed blood and semen stains, with the help of distant relatives of the victim and suspect.

Remarkably, there was a positive match for the blood stains and an unnamed direct descendant of Ms Eddowes.

A request to exhume Kosminski’s body was declined, however, the DNA found in the semen stains was also a match for one of Kosminski’s sister’s descendants.

This, says Mr Edwards, is conclusive proof as to the identity of Jack the Ripper – a case that remained unsolved since 1888.

Kosminski was born on September 11, 1865, making him 22 and 23 at the time of the murders. He grew up in Klodawa, near Warsaw, the youngest of seven children, with his father dying when he was aged just eight.

His mother remarried and records suggest he may have been sexually abused by his stepfather. In 1882, six years before the murders, the family fled to the East End of London to escape anti-Semitism that was spreading across eastern Europe after the death of Tsar Alexander II a year earlier.

During the murders investigation, the Dr Robert Anderson, head of the London Criminal Investigation Department, had designated Kosminski as key suspect as the killer.

Previously confidential police reports, that were published in 1894 as the Macnaghten Memorandum, recorded that detectives believed he had a “great hatred of women, specially of the prostitute class, and had strong homicidal tendencies”.

Butm even then political correctness made them reluctant to accuse a Jew, due to the potential fallout of antiSemitism.

With no known photographs of Kosminski’ ever found, Mr Edwards then contacted his descendants to obtain as many historical family portraits as possible to feed them into a sophisticated computer programme which has created his likeness based on the appearance of close relatives.

The new image shows a young man with short hair, high cheek bones and a piercing stare.

Further research by Mr Edwards has since uncovered how he believes the serial killer evaded justice due to his brother’s involvement in freemasonry, and even why the mutilations took place.

In February 2023 he received several photographs, including one of 15 men all with handlebar moustaches and dressed the same in suits with an overgarment. They were revealed to be members of the Lodge of , an order of Freemasonry set up for Jewish immigrants in Britain.

One of them was Kosminski’s eldest brother, Isaac, who was a wealthy tailor who had moved to London in 1870 and changed his last name to Abrahams. Remarkably, in an ancient Masonic Code, the “Master Mason”, called Hiram Abiff, was murdered by three assassins, known as “The Juwes” for refusing to give up his secrets.

The fable led to the creation of thee Masonic blood oaths giving descriptions of mutilations, such as cutting throats, removing tongues, and “That my left breast had been torn open and my heart and vitals taken.”

Mr Edwards is convinced that the Ripper was not a random mutilator, but was carrying out these Masonic instructions.

He also believes that the Masonic connections of his brother were probably what prevented his younger sibling’s arrest, to avoid the fallout against the Jews.

More alarmingly, the Ripper left another clue at the Eddowes murder scene. Nearby scrawled in chalk was the mysterious phrase

“The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.”

With the word Juwes, spelt in the same Masonic way.

Kosminski was never arrested and in 1890, after suffering a suspected schizophrenic breakdown, in which he threatened his sister with a knife, he committed to Colney Hatch lunatic asylum in North London.

He died 28 years later in the Leavesden Asylum, Hertfordshire.

Naming Jack The Ripper: The Definitive Reveal by Russell Edwards is out now published by Rowman & Littlefield.