# DNA evidence unmasks Jack the Ripper. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 7, 2014, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783 "2014-09-07T17:33:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a8b319/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_wuzzy)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/61 "2014-09-08T16:47:14Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > I can’t think of a prior one that relied on hard evidence. (That is assuming the DNA tests are upheld by scrutiny, yes.) > > All the prior ones were based on real or fake diary entries (real diaries and diarist, fantasy or prank entries; fake, no explanation needed), supposed deathbed confessions and deathbed identifications of a suspect (again, several levels of “real” and fake) and, by far the largest category IIRC, elaborate “detective” work tying together nine layers of nonsense and supposition to pin it on notable, highborn suspects. > > I am by no means an expert, even an amateur one, but I’ve been interested in Ripperology for decades. I’ve read a lot. Not one prior claim of a suspect I can think of passed the first sniff test, especially those that involved, say, Gull and a cohort of palace and Masonic enablers. > > Out of that history of hoaxes, elaborate conspiracy theories and just plain English eccentricity, this one just strikes me as believable and very likely true… because Kosminski was a prime suspect in the first place, one of the simplest and most obvious possibilities, and all that’s ever been needed is one solid piece of evidence to make the conclusion final. Fair enough if none of the other theories passed your sniff test. The majority of them have passed such a test for millions of other gullible readers though. The Diary had an entire industry arguing its merits for a decade or more(along with a scientifically tested Ripper watch). This one does not pass the smell test either - until the evidence presented is released to experts, and that the results prove overwhelming. Right now everyone should see the warning signs of such claims being made in this book. The shawls dubious provenance being one reason, and the fact we are meant to believe a semen and blood soaked shawl was stolen by a policeman as a present for his wife. Then, fortunately for cold case crime detection the shawl was left unwashed for a whole century. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/62 "2014-09-08T16:53:11Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > How long would you need for the blood stain to set in? Would a year be significantly less difficult to get out than two years? Or a hundred? I can’t claim any expertise, but I expect that the main issue would be degradation of the sample over a century, that is, breakdown of the organic components over time. > [@](#): > > Does she have any male relations? A maternal cousin, perhaps? That might be the hoaxer, with the woman who got tested an unknowing patsy. Her identity is being kept confidential, so it’s not easy to find out. But if you assume both the woman and a male relative were involved, then you’re multiplying conspirators. A male relative could become suspicious if he were asked to provide a semen sample when a blood sample would work just as well, especially if a cousin had also provided a blood sample. It seems to me in this case a hoax is a more complicated explanation than a straightforward one. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/63 "2014-09-08T17:07:03Z")
Based on reading Wiki, ISTM that two arguments against Kosminski are that 1) he is claimed to have only spoken Yiddish, and some of the letters from the Ripper are thought to have been genuine, and 2) there’s reason to believe that one of the early police sources which named him may have been referring to someone else with a similar name (which raises the possibility that the other sources are similarly referring to the other guy). > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The fact that the Ripper stopped killing people is also pretty good evidence that the perpetrator was locked up or died. Anyone possible subjects that continued to live freely are unlikely to have been the perpetrator. The killings are thought to have occurred in 1888 and Kosminski was locked up in 1891. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/64 "2014-09-08T17:22:44Z")
> [@Omega\_Glory](#): > > While the larger point about mtDNA not being specific to the individual is true, it’s passed down from a mother to all of her children, not just her female children. The scientist linked Kosiminski’s DNA to that of a female descendant of his sister. Yes, it’s passed to sons, but the link ends there. No son will pass it on to any of his children. His children will carry their mother’s mitochondria. Sons therefore fall away from the mitochondrial lineage. Mitochondrial DNA is not mixed during reproduction and therefore is used to track lineages for thousands of years. It picks up mutations slowly, yes, but those are the kind of small differences that most DNA test methods will miss. mtDNA is used for population genetics, not to identify people. I’d be interested to see a guess of how many thousand people typically share the same mtDNA. Identifying mtDNA is better than identifying blood type, yet with the provinence of the shawn pretty much useless, I’d call the results suggestive, but a long way from conclusive. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a8b319/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_wuzzy)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/65 "2014-09-08T17:23:27Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > Based on reading Wiki, ISTM that two arguments against Kosminski are that 1) he is claimed to have only spoken Yiddish, and some of the letters from the Ripper are thought to have been genuine, and 2) there’s reason to believe that one of the early police sources which named him may have been referring to someone else with a similar name (which raises the possibility that the other sources are similarly referring to the other guy).The killings are thought to have occurred in 1888 and Kosminski was locked up in 1891. Kosminski speaking only Yiddish is probably incorrect. In 1889 he seems to have been able to converse with a policeman in a separate case without the aid of an interpreter. Neither is an interpeter mentioned in the subsequent court proceedings. His incarceration is more problematic. Some documents say he was locked up soon after the murders(how “soon” is soon? ). This appears to be wrong. Other documents say he was being watched by the police long before his incarceration; and he knew he was being watched. This is why the murders stopped. Its all very debateable. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/66 "2014-09-08T17:43:06Z")
More to the point there are other murders which it 9s thought that the Ripper might have been responsible for, after the four that are most well known. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/67 "2014-09-08T17:53:05Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](#): > > Kosminski speaking only Yiddish is probably incorrect. In 1889 he seems to have been able to converse with a policeman in a separate case without the aid of an interpreter. Can you point to the source for this? > [@](#): > > Neither is an interpeter mentioned in the subsequent court proceedings. He was a lunatic. I’m not sure courts at that time were so particular in making sure lunatics had interpreters in cases involving them. Apparently he came from Poland in his mid-teens and lived a pretty Jewish area from that time. It wouldn’t be surprising if he didn’t speak much English. It’s unlikely he would have learned how to write it (my impression is that Jews in Poland at that time generally did not speak or write Polish and would have been unfamiliar withh Roman letters). > [@](#): > > Other documents say he was being watched by the police long before his incarceration; and he knew he was being watched. Which documents? Per Wiki, there are all of 3 documents which link him to the case, one being a memo written at the time, another being a reference (with no name mentioned) in someone’s memoirs, and the third being a gloss in the margin of someone else’s copy of those memoirs. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/68 "2014-09-08T18:01:42Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > The killings are thought to have occurred in 1888 and Kosminski was locked up in 1891. The killings, the main ones at least, definitely occurred in mid to late 1888 and Kosminski was locked up around March 1889. The four later murders are almost certainly unrelated. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/69 "2014-09-08T18:07:32Z")
Missed the edit: …locked up around March 1889 (per _The Compleat Jack the Ripper_, 1975). He may have had outside privileges until around 1891. The four later murders are almost certainly unrelated. Other than one evident copycat, they bear no relation to the five canonical murders other than being violent and of women. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/70 "2014-09-08T18:19:22Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Her identity is being kept confidential, so it’s not easy to find out. But if you assume both the woman and a male relative were involved, then you’re multiplying conspirators. I’m not, hence “unknowing patsy.” > [@](#): > > It seems to me in this case a hoax is a more complicated explanation than a straightforward one. It’s kind of hard to get more complicated than the supposed provenance of the shawl. That said, I can see a conspiracy here that involves no more than three people, albeit they need some fairly specific qualities. You need a relative of Eddowes, a relative of Kominski, and a third party to “find” the shawl and present it to the public. It’s pretty unlikely that those people would come together randomly, unless you consider that there’s [a large and long-established community of Jack the Ripper enthusiasts](http://allevents.in/salisbury/jack-the-ripper-conference-2014/1394222554151197#) who regularly correspond and socialize with each other. It’s also not an unreasonable supposition that such societies would disproportionately attract people who can trace some sort of ancestral connection to the original events. So, a relative of the victim and a relative of a suspect meet up at some point at a Whitechapel Society meeting, and hatch a plan to “prove” that Kominski was Jack the Ripper. They find a vintage shawl, and each provide a bit of DNA for it, then let it sit for a few years until it’s aged properly. They bring in a friend, and create a story explaining how he got the shawl, and why he would suspect it was connected to the Ripper killings. They present the shawl to a prominent Ripper scholar as a genuine article, who then independently tracks down a different, unwitting Kosminski relative, and takes the shawl and the blood sample to the geneticist for comparison. It’s an unlikely scenario, sure, but is it any more unlikely than a cop who never worked in Whitechapel found an expensive scarf that was owned by the destitute victim of one of the most lurid murders in the city’s history, and instead of turning it in as evidence immediately, bunged it up in his attic for a hundred and twenty years? Honestly, it seems like a coin flip which is the more realistic idea. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/71 "2014-09-08T18:47:04Z")
Is there nothing that would distinguish genetic material that is a hundred years old from material that has been recently obtained? I would have thought there would be some chemical or biological changes that could not be faked. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/72 "2014-09-08T18:51:44Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > I’d be interested to see a guess of how many thousand people typically share the same mtDNA. From [here,](http://dnamatches.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/understanding-mitochondrial-dna-testing.html) a complete 100% match (which is what is being claimed) implies a common maternal ancestor within the past 5 generations. Since the contemporary relative is already several generations removed from Kosminski, this implies a common ancestor perhaps a generation or two before that of Kosminski. At the least, I think a complete match could distinguish Polish Jewish heritage from Anglo-Saxon. Although several of the other subjects were Polish, the evidence against them doesn’t seem to be as good. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a8b319/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_wuzzy)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/73 "2014-09-08T18:57:43Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > Can you point to the source for this?He was a lunatic. I’m not sure courts at that time were so particular in making sure lunatics had interpreters in cases involving them. > > Apparently he came from Poland in his mid-teens and lived a pretty Jewish area from that time. It wouldn’t be surprising if he didn’t speak much English. It’s unlikely he would have learned how to write it (my impression is that Jews in Poland at that time generally did not speak or write Polish and would have been unfamiliar withh Roman letters). > > Which documents? > > Per Wiki, there are all of 3 documents which link him to the case, one being a memo written at the time, another being a reference (with no name mentioned) in someone’s memoirs, and the third being a gloss in the margin of someone else’s copy of those memoirs. Some info in the link below about his court case on an unrelated matter. Its the first post on the thread, about two thirds of the way down in the article posted. It (and another article I think)is transcribed in greater detail elsewhere but I cannot find it. What the article(s) do not mention is the need for an interpretor either by the policeman on the scene or at the court. The Ripper letters are almost certainly a hoax. An ability to write in English was not needed. [http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=7575](http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=7575) When I said documents I meant either police documents or memoirs. MacNaughten, Anderson and Swanson all mention him along with some other memoirs I think. Some mention that Kosminski being locked up coincided with the ending of the killings, some contradict this(George Sims) and at least one mention the Jewish suspect being watched for quite some time before he was carried away to a lunatic asylum. I’ll try to find more details when I have more time. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/74 "2014-09-08T19:02:59Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > I can’t claim any expertise, but I expect that the main issue would be degradation of the sample over a century, that is, breakdown of the organic components over time. I’ve heard of a DNA match helping to convict a suspect in a 55-year-old murder, but 125 years or so? This sounds difficult to accept without good provenance of the test item and solid peer review of published findings. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/75 "2014-09-08T19:06:44Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > It’s an unlikely scenario, sure, but is it any more unlikely than a cop who never worked in Whitechapel found an expensive scarf that was owned by the destitute victim of one of the most lurid murders in the city’s history, and instead of turning it in as evidence immediately, bunged it up in his attic for a hundred and twenty years? Your scenario seems far more unlikely to me, simply because it requires a conspiracy not only by several very specific people but also the fact that they would have to know enough about genetic testing and methodology to fool the geneticist. The other only requires somewhat improbable behavior by a single individual. If you want to believe it’s a hoax, it would be much simpler just to propose collusion between Edwards and the geneticist. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/76 "2014-09-08T19:08:26Z")
The whole “Could have been client DNA” theory would suffer if his was the only DNA on it besides her. Any word of how many people’s DNA they found? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/77 "2014-09-08T19:10:19Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > I’ve heard of a DNA match helping to convict a suspect in a 55-year-old murder, but 125 years or so? Analysis of mtDNA has been used to [support the identification of the remains of Jesse James 113 years after his death.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11210907) ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/78 "2014-09-08T19:23:24Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Your scenario seems far more unlikely to me, simply because it requires a conspiracy not only by several very specific people but also the fact that they would have to know enough about genetic testing and methodology to fool the geneticist. How much did they really need to know about genetic testing and methodology, though? ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/79 "2014-09-08T19:52:33Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > I’ve heard of a DNA match helping to convict a suspect in a 55-year-old murder, but 125 years or so? DNA has been successfully recovered and analyzed from samples multiple thousands of years old. Peforming genetic matching on such data is a trivial step these days. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dna-evidence-unmasks-jack-the-ripper/697783/80 "2014-09-08T20:33:20Z")
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