An amateur sleuth with a book to sell and a scientist working in his spare time claimed to have solved one of the biggest murder mysteries in history by naming Jack the Ripper as a Polish immigrant in the 19th Century after discovering what they said was conclusive DNA evidence. 
 
 Aaron Kosminski, a Polish Jew whose family had emigrated to London to escape pogroms, is “definitely, categorically and absolutely” the man behind the grisly series of murders in 1888 that left at least five women dead and mutilated in the streets of London’s East End, said Russell Edwards, the author of the latest in a long line of speculative books on the affair. 
 
 “I’ve got the only piece of forensic evidence in the whole history of the case. I’ve spent 14 years working, and we have definitely solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was. Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt. This is it now – we have unmasked him,” Mr Edwards said. 
 
 Leaving aside for a moment that Kosminski, who was 23 when the murders took place and died in a lunatic asylum at the age of 53, was already a leading candidate for the murders, what exactly is this new evidence that so definitely nails him as the culprit? 
 
 It turns out to hinge on an old shawl that Mr Edwards bought in 2007 at an auction in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. He claims this large piece of cloth was found at the scene of the murder of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper’s victims, and has a letter to “prove” it from a descendent of Sergeant Amos Simpson, the policeman on duty the night Eddowes was killed who had claimed the abandoned shawl for his wife. 
 
 Horrified by the blood-soaked wrap, Mrs Simpson never wore or even washed it, but stored it away where it became a family heirloom to be passed down the generations until it was sold to Mr Edwards. 
 
 Leaving aside, again, whether we can believe the provenance of this crucial piece of evidence, or that it was never washed, or Mr Edwards’ assumption that the shawl was left at the crime scene not by Eddowes – who was far too poor to own such an expensive item – but by the Ripper himself, what links the cloth with Kosminski and the murder? 
 
 It turns out that Mr Edwards has been able to track down living descendants of both Eddowes and Kosminki and found that their DNA sequences match DNA samples recovered from the shawl, presumably from the blood of Eddowes and the semen of Kosminski. 
 
 The scientist who performed this remarkable feat is Jari Louhelainen, a molecular biologist at Liverpool John Moores University. Unfortunately, he has not so far published his study in a peer-reviewed scientific journal so it is impossible to verify his claims or analyse his methodology. 
 
 Leaving aside (yet again) the claim that the shawl was never washed or cleaned at any time during the past 126 years, the biggest problem in carrying out such sensitive DNA analysis is the question of cross contamination. For instance, if Dr Louhelainen’s laboratory worked with the DNA of the two living descendants, how sure is he that this DNA has not contaminated the samples he has extracted from the shawl itself? 
 
 When other labs have worked on the ancient DNA of important samples, such as the DNA extracted from Neanderthal bones or the remains of the Romanovs, the last Russian royal family, they have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid the possibility of cross contamination. 
 
 They have also worked on “blind” samples to ensure they do know which sample they are analysing in order to avoid unwitting prejudice, and have even carried out duplicate blinded experiments in two different laboratories to replicate each other’s work. 
 
 None of this, as far we know, has been done in this case. Dr Louhelainen may be satisfied that he has found the culprit, but many other scientists are not, including Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, the man who invented the DNA fingerprint technique 30 years ago this week. 
 
 “An interesting but remarkable claim that needs to be subjected to peer review, with detailed analysis of the provenance of the shawl and the nature of the claimed DNA match with the perpetrator's descendants and its power of discrimination; no actual evidence has yet been provided,” Sir Alec told The Independent. 
 
 In any case, as Sir Alec pointed out: “If I remember correctly when I visited the Black Museum at New Scotland Yard, Kosminski was long regarded as by far the most likely perpetrator.” ||||| PATRICIA CORNWELL WADES IN 
 
 The name of Walter Sickert has been linked to the Jack the Ripper murders by several authors and, over the years, his role in the killings has been said to have varied enormously. 
 
 According to some authors he was an accomplice in the Whitechapel Murders, whilst others have depicted him as knowing who was responsible for the crimes and duly informing on them. 
 
 But, according to the crime novelist Patricia Cornwell in her 2002 book Portrait of a Killer - Jack the Ripper Case Closed Sickert was in fact the man who carried our the crimes that became known as the Jack the Ripper Murders. 
 
 MODERN FORENSIC TECHNIQUES 
 
 As a successful, and wealthy, novelist, Cornwell was not restricted by the constraints of budget when she set out to hunt down history's most notorious serial killer. 
 
 She set out to do something that few, if any, other Ripperologists had been either able, or inclined to do, namely, apply modern forensic techniques to the Jack the Ripper case and, in so doing, solve, once and for all, the world's greatest murder mystery. 
 
 When her book was published it caused a worldwide sensation and the spotlight was turned on both Cornwall herself and on her suspect."I do believe 100%," she told a US chat show, "that Walter Richard Sickert committed those serial crimes" 
 
 IMPOTENCY AND PATHOLOGICAL HATRED 
 
 According to Cornwell's theory Walter Sickert had been made impotent by a series of painful childhood operations for a fistula of the penis. 
 
 This impotency had scarred him emotionally and had left him with a pathological hatred of women which, in time, led him to carry out a series of murders in the East End of London which became known as the Jack the Ripper murders. 
 
 Doubts were raised about her theory when it was pointed out that St Mark's Hospital, where the operations on the young Sickert were supposedly performed, specialised in rectal as opposed to genital fistulas. 
 
 BUT WAS SICKERT IMPOTENT? 
 
 It was also pointed out that the evidence suggests that Sickert was anything but impotent. 
 
 Indeed, his first wife had divorced him citing his adultery in her petition for divorce. In addition he is believed to have had several mistresses and is thought to have fathered at least one illegitimate child. 
 
 So the case for Sickert's being impotent appears to be none existent. 
 
 So what evidence is there to suggest that Sickert possessed a pathological hatred of women? 
 
 Again, not a great deal. In Portrait of a killer Cornwell cites a series of Sickert's paintings that were inspired by the murder in 1908 of a Camden Town prostitute by the name of Emily Dimmock. According to Patricia Cornwall's hypothesis, this series of pictures bears a striking resemblance to the post-mortem photographs of the victims of Jack the Ripper. 
 
 FASCINATED BY MURDER 
 
 Now there is little doubt that Sickert was fascinated by murder and in finding different ways in which to depict the menace of the crime and the criminal. 
 
 But, to cite this as evidence that he was actually a murderer - and, specifically, the murderer who carried out the Jack the Ripper killings - is hardly definitive proof. 
 
 CAN WE PLACE HIM IN THE AREA? 
 
 When looking at a particular Jack the Ripper suspect, or any murder suspect for that matter, you need to be able to link your suspect with the crime. 
 
 You need to, for example, be able to place them at the scene of the crime, 
 
 Here again the case against Sickert unravels slightly since there is evidence to suggest that he may not even have been in England when the murders were committed. 
 
 A number of letters from several family members refer to him holidaying in France for a period that corresponds with most of the Ripper murders. 
 
 Although it has been suggested that he might have travelled to London in order to commit the murders and then returned to France, no evidence has been produced to suggest that he did so. 
 
 DID HE WRITE THE JACK THE RIPPER LETTERS? 
 
 Cornwall also contends that Sickert was responsible for writing most of the Jack the Ripper correspondence, and frequently uses statements made in those letters to strengthen her case against him. 
 
 Authorities on the case, as well as the police at the time, nearly all share the opinion that none of the letters - not even the Dear Boss missive that gave him his name - were the work of the killer. 
 
 In addition, there is the problem that the style of the letters varies so greatly in grammatical structure, spelling and handwriting that it is almost impossible for a single author to have created all of them. 
 
 DNA TESTING 
 
 In her quest to prove Sickert’s guilt, Cornwall also funded DNA-tests on numerous stamps and envelopes which she believed that Sickert had licked, and compared the DNA to that found on the Ripper letters. Interestingly, a possible match was found with the stamp on the Dr. Openshaw letter. 
 
 Critics, however, have pointed out that the DNA comparisons focused on mitochondrial DNA, which could be shared by anything from between 1% and 10% of the population, so it was hardly unique to Sickert. 
 
 Another intriguing find was that the Dr Openshaw letter, two other Jack the Ripper letters, and eight letters penned by Walter Sickert, were all written on paper that bore the watermark of the Aberdeen paper manufacturer Alexander Pirie and Sons. 
 
 But dissenters argue that the paper was widely available, that the Sickert letters were written between 1885 and 1887, and that he probably wasn’t using that paper in 1888. 
 
 Sickert may well have been responsible for writing some of the Jack the Ripper correspondence, but since it is generally agreed that none of the letters was written by the murderer, it only makes him guilty of having written hoax letters. 
 
 The claim that he was also guilty of the Whitechapel Murders is far from proven, and the Jack the Ripper case is anything but closed. ||||| WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Jack the Ripper unmasked: How amateur sleuth used DNA breakthrough to identify Britain's most notorious criminal 126 years after string of terrible murders 
 
 DNA evidence on a shawl found at Ripper murder scene nails killer 
 
 By testing descendants of victim and suspect, identifications were made 
 
 Jack the Ripper has been identified as Polish-born Aaron Kosminski 
 
 Kosminski was a suspect when the Ripper murders took place in 1888 
 
 Hairdresser Kosminski lived in Whitechapel and was later put in an asylum 
 
 GUILTY: A DNA sample has proven Polish immigrant Aaron Kosminski was Jack the Ripper 
 
 It is the greatest murder mystery of all time, a puzzle that has perplexed criminologists for more than a century and spawned books, films and myriad theories ranging from the plausible to the utterly bizarre. 
 
 But now, thanks to modern forensic science, The Mail on Sunday can exclusively reveal the true identity of Jack the Ripper, the serial killer responsible for at least five grisly murders in Whitechapel in East London during the autumn of 1888. 
 
 DNA evidence has now shown beyond reasonable doubt which one of six key suspects commonly cited in connection with the Ripper’s reign of terror was the actual killer – and we reveal his identity. 
 
 
 
 A shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper’s victims, has been analysed and found to contain DNA from her blood as well as DNA from the killer. 
 
 The landmark discovery was made after businessman Russell Edwards, 48, bought the shawl at auction and enlisted the help of Dr Jari Louhelainen, a world-renowned expert in analysing genetic evidence from historical crime scenes. 
 
 Using cutting-edge techniques, Dr Louhelainen was able to extract 126-year-old DNA from the material and compare it to DNA from descendants of Eddowes and the suspect, with both proving a perfect match. 
 
 The revelation puts an end to the fevered speculation over the Ripper’s identity which has lasted since his murderous rampage in the most impoverished and dangerous streets of London. 
 
 In the intervening century, a Jack the Ripper industry has grown up, prompting a dizzying array of more than 100 suspects, including Queen Victoria’s grandson – Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence – the post-Impressionist painter Walter Sickert, and the former Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone. 
 
 
 
 
 
 It was March 2007, in an auction house in Bury St Edmunds, that I first saw the blood-soaked shawl. It was in two surprisingly large sections – the first measuring 73.5in by 25.5in, the second 24in by 19in – and, despite its stains, far prettier than any artefact connected to Jack the Ripper might be expected to be. It was mostly blue and dark brown, with a delicate pattern of Michaelmas daisies – red, ochre and gold – at either end. 
 
 It was said to have been found next to the body of one of the Ripper’s victims, Catherine Eddowes, and soaked in her blood. There was no evidence for its provenance, although after the auction I obtained a letter from its previous owner who claimed his ancestor had been a police officer present at the murder scene and had taken it from there. 
 
 Yet I knew I wanted to buy the shawl and was prepared to pay a great deal of money for it. I hoped somehow to prove that it was genuine. Beyond that, I hadn’t considered the possibilities. I certainly had no idea that this flimsy, badly stained, and incomplete piece of material would lead to the solution to the most famous murder mystery of all time: the identification of Jack the Ripper. 
 
 An image depicting police discovering one of the victims of the murders in London which took place in 1888 
 
 When my involvement in the 126-year-old case began, I was just another armchair detective, interested enough to conduct my own extensive research after watching the Johnny Depp film From Hell in 2001. It piqued my curiosity about the 1888 killings when five – possibly more – prostitutes were butchered in London’s East End. 
 
 Despite massive efforts by the police, the perpetrator evaded capture, spawning the mystery which has fuelled countless books, films, TV programmes and tours of Whitechapel. Theories about his identity have been virtually limitless, with everyone from Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence, to Lewis Carroll being named as possible suspects. As time has passed, the name Jack the Ripper has become synonymous with the devil himself; his crimes setting the gruesome standard against which other horrific murders are judged. 
 
 I joined the armies of those fascinated by the mystery and researching the Ripper became a hobby. I visited the National Archives in Kew to view as much of the original paperwork as still exists, noting how many of the authors of books speculating about the Ripper had not bothered to do this. I was convinced that there must be something, somewhere that had been missed. 
 
 By 2007, I felt I had exhausted all avenues until I read a newspaper article about the sale of a shawl connected to the Ripper case. Its owner, David Melville-Hayes, believed it had been in his family’s possession since the murder of Catherine Eddowes, when his ancestor, Acting Sergeant Amos Simpson, asked his superiors if he could take it home to give to his wife, a dressmaker. 
 
 Incredibly, it was stowed without ever being washed, and was handed down from David’s great-grandmother, Mary Simpson, to his grandmother, Eliza Smith, and then his mother, Eliza Mills, later Hayes. 
 
 In 1991, David gave it to Scotland Yard’s Crime Museum, where it was placed in storage rather than on display because of the lack of proof of its provenance. In 2001, David reclaimed it, and it was exhibited at the annual Jack the Ripper conference. One forensic test was carried out on it for a Channel 5 documentary in 2006, using a simple cotton swab from a randomly chosen part of the shawl, but it was inconclusive. 
 
 Most Ripper experts dismissed it when it came up for auction, but I believed I had hit on something no one else had noticed which linked it to the Ripper. The shawl is patterned with Michaelmas daisies. Today the Christian feast of Michaelmas is archaic, but in Victorian times it was familiar as a quarter day, when rents and debts were due. 
 
 I discovered there were two dates for it: one, September 29, in the Western Christian church and the other, November 8, in the Eastern Orthodox church. With a jolt, I realised the two dates coincided precisely with the nights of the last two murder dates. September 29 was the night on which Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were killed, and November 8 was the night of the final, most horrific of the murders, that of Mary Jane Kelly. 
 
 Found at the scene: Russell Edwards holds the shawl he bought in 2007, allegedly handed down from a policeman who took it from the scene, which had the incriminating DNA on it 
 
 I reasoned that it made no sense for Eddowes to have owned the expensive shawl herself; this was a woman so poor she had pawned her shoes the day before her murder. But could the Ripper have brought the shawl with him and left it as an obscure clue about when he was planning to strike next? It was just a hunch, and far from proof of anything, but it set me off on my journey. 
 
 Before buying it, I spoke to Alan McCormack, the officer in charge of the Crime Museum, also known as the Black Museum. He told me the police had always believed they knew the identity of the Ripper. Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, the officer in charge of the investigation, had named him in his notes: Aaron Kosminski, a Polish Jew who had fled to London with his family, escaping the Russian pogroms, in the early 1880s. 
 
 Kosminski has always been one of the three most credible suspects. He is often described as having been a hairdresser in Whitechapel, the occupation written on his admission papers to the workhouse in 1890. What is certain is he was seriously mentally ill, probably a paranoid schizophrenic who suffered auditory hallucinations and described as a misogynist prone to ‘self-abuse’ – a euphemism for masturbation. 
 
 McCormack said police did not have enough evidence to convict Kosminski, despite identification by a witness, but kept him under 24-hour surveillance until he was committed to mental asylums for the rest of his life. I became convinced Kosminski was our man, and I was excited at the prospect of proving it. I felt sure that modern science would be able to produce real evidence from the stains on the shawl. After a few false starts, I found a scientist I hoped could help. 
 
 Dr Jari Louhelainen is a leading expert in genetic evidence from historical crime scenes, combining his day job as senior lecturer in molecular biology at Liverpool John Moores University with working on cold cases for Interpol and other projects. He agreed to conduct tests on the shawl in his spare time. 
 
 The tests began in 2011, when Jari used special photographic analysis to establish what the stains were. 
 
 Using an infrared camera, he was able to tell me the dark stains were not just blood, but consistent with arterial blood spatter caused by slashing – exactly the grim death Catherine Eddowes had met. 
 
 But the next revelation was the most heart-stopping. Under UV photography, a set of fluorescent stains showed up which Jari said had the characteristics of semen. I’d never expected to find evidence of the Ripper himself, so this was thrilling, although Jari cautioned me that more testing was required before any conclusions could be drawn. 
 
 Obsession: Russell Edwards points to Hambury Street where one of the murders took place 
 
 He also found evidence of split body parts during the frenzied attack. One of Eddowes’ kidneys was removed by her murderer, and later in his research Jari managed to identify the presence of what he believed to be a kidney cell. 
 
 It was impossible to extract DNA from the stains on the shawl using the method employed in current cases, in which swabs are taken. The samples were just too old. 
 
 Instead, he used a method he called ‘vacuuming’, using a pipette filled with a special ‘buffering’ liquid that removed the genetic material in the cloth without damaging it. 
 
 As a non-scientist, I found myself in a new world as Jari warned that it would also be impossible to use genomic DNA, which is used in fresh cases and contains a human’s entire genetic data, because over time it would have become fragmented. 
 
 But he explained it would be possible to use mitochondrial DNA instead. It is passed down exclusively through the female line, is much more abundant than genomic DNA, and survives far better. 
 
 This meant that in order to give us something to test against, I had to trace a direct descendant through the female line of Catherine Eddowes. Luckily, a woman named Karen Miller, the three-times great-granddaughter of Eddowes, had featured in a documentary about the Ripper’s victims, and agreed to provide a sample of her DNA. 
 
 Jari managed to get six complete DNA profiles from the shawl, and when he tested them against Karen’s they were a perfect match. 
 
 It was an amazing breakthrough. We now knew that the shawl was authentic, and was at the scene of the crime in September 1888, and had the victim’s blood on it. On its own, this made it the single most important artefact in Ripper history: nothing else has ever been linked scientifically to the scene of any of the crimes. 
 
 Months of research on the shawl, including analysing the dyes used, had proved that it was made in Eastern Europe in the early 19th Century. Now it was time to attempt to prove that it contained the killer’s DNA. 
 
 The suspects: The long line of men believed to be Jack the Ripper include, from top left to right, Prince Albert Victor, Edward VII’s son, allegedly driven by syphilis-induced madness, Sir William Gull, Queen Victoria’s doctor, painter Walter Sickert, a Jewish shoemaker, a polish barber who later poisoned three women - and Kosminski 
 
 
 
 Jari used the same extraction method on the semen traces on the shawl, warning that the likelihood of sperm lasting all that time was very slim. He enlisted the help of Dr David Miller, a world expert on the subject, and in 2012 they made another incredible breakthrough when they found surviving cells. They were from the epithelium, a type of tissue which coats organs. In this case, it was likely to have come from the urethra during ejaculation. 
 
 Kosminski was 23 when the murders took place, and living with his two brothers and a sister in Greenfield Street, just 200 yards from where the third victim, Elizabeth Stride, was killed. As a key suspect, his life story has long been known, but I also researched his family. 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. She provided me with swabs from the inside of her mouth. 
 
 Amplifying and sequencing the DNA from the cells found on the shawl took months of painstaking, innovative work. By that point, my excitement had reached fever-pitch. And when the email finally arrived telling me Jari had found a perfect match, I was overwhelmed. Seven years after I bought the shawl, we had nailed Aaron Kosminski. 
 
 As a scientist, Jari is naturally cautious, unwilling to let his imagination run away without testing every minute element, but even he declared the finding ‘one hell of a masterpiece’. I celebrated by visiting the East End, wandering the streets where Kosminski lived, worked and committed his despicable crimes, feeling a sense of euphoria but also disbelief that we had unmasked the Ripper. 
 
 Kosminski was not a member of the Royal Family, or an eminent surgeon or politician. Serial killers rarely are. Instead, he was a pathetic creature, a lunatic who achieved sexual satisfaction from slashing women to death in the most brutal manner. He died in Leavesden Asylum from gangrene at the age of 53, weighing just 7st. 
 
 No doubt a slew of books and films will now emerge to speculate on his personality and motivation. I have no wish to do so. I wanted to provide real answers using scientific evidence, and I’m overwhelmed that 126 years on, I have solved the mystery. 
 
 Shawl that nailed Polish lunatic Aaron Kosminski and the forensic expert that made the critical match 
 
 By Dr Jari Louhelainen 
 
 Evidence: Russell points to the part of the shawl where DNA was found 
 
 When Russell Edwards first approached me in 2011, I wasn’t aware of the massive levels of interest in the Ripper case, as I’m a scientist originally from Finland. 
 
 But by early this year, when I realised we were on the verge of making a big discovery, working on the shawl had taken over my life, occupying me from early in the morning until late at night. 
 
 It has taken a great deal of hard work, using cutting-edge scientific techniques which would not have been possible five years ago. 
 
 To extract DNA samples from the stains on the shawl, I used a technique I developed myself, which I call ‘vacuuming’ – to pull the original genetic material from the depths of the cloth. 
 
 I filled a sterile pipette with a liquid ‘buffer’, a solution known to stabilise the cells and DNA, and injected it into the cloth to dissolve the material trapped in the weave of the fabric without damaging the cells, then sucked it out. 
 
 I needed to sequence the DNA found in the stains on the shawl, which means mapping the DNA by determining the exact order of the bases in a strand. I used polymerase chain reaction, a technique which allows millions of exact copies of the DNA to be made, enough for sequencing. 
 
 When I tested the resulting DNA profiles against the DNA taken from swabs from Catherine Eddowes’s descendant, they were a match. 
 
 I used the same extraction method on the stains which had characteristics of seminal fluid. 
 
 Dr David Miller found epithelial cells – which line cavities and organs – much to our surprise, as we were not expecting to find anything usable after 126 years. 
 
 Then I used a new process called whole genome amplification to copy the DNA 500 million-fold and allow it to be profiled. 
 
 Once I had the profile, I could compare it to that of the female descendant of Kosminski’s sister, who had given us a sample of her DNA swabbed from inside her mouth. 
 
 The first strand of DNA showed a 99.2 per cent match, as the analysis instrument could not determine the sequence of the missing 0.8 per cent fragment of DNA. On testing the second strand, we achieved a perfect 100 per cent match. 
 
 Because of the genome amplification technique, I was also able to ascertain the ethnic and geographical background of the DNA I extracted. It 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. 
 
 Now that it’s over, I’m excited and proud of what we’ve achieved, and satisfied that we have established, as far as we possibly can, that Aaron Kosminski is the culprit. 
 
 Dr Jari Louhelainen is a senior lecturer in molecular biology at Liverpool John Moores University and an expert in historic cold-case forensic research. 
 
 © Russell Edwards 2014 ||||| Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email 
 
 The true identity of notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper can now be revealed thanks to a DNA breakthrough, it has been claimed. 
 
 Author and self confessed "armchair detective" Russell Edwards claims to have solved perhaps the most notorious whodunit ever. 
 
 Mr Edwards claims Aaron Kosminski, a 23 year-old Polish immigrant who ended up dying in an asylum, was "definitely, categorically and absolutely" the man behind the grisly killing spree in 1888 in London's East End. 
 
 He said a blood-stained shawl he bought in 2007 after an auction in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, held vital DNA evidence which led him to the killer. 
 
 "I've got the only piece of forensic evidence in the whole history of the case. I've spent 14 years working on it, and we have definitively solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was," he said. 
 
 "Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt. This is it now - we have unmasked him." 
 
 (Image: Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) 
 
 Jack the Ripper murdered at least five women, slashing their throats, removing some of their internal organs and leaving their mutilated bodied in Whitechapel's darkened alleyways. 
 
 Mr Edwards, 48, from Barnet, north London, was "captivated" by the murder mystery and had been investigating it in his spare time, but had come to the conclusion it could never be solved. 
 
 But then in 2007 he saw a shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper's victims, was up for sale. 
 
 He bought it, and enlisted the help of Jari Louhelainen, an expert in molecular biology, who used pioneering techniques to find DNA from her blood and that of the killer. 
 
 He said: "Here I am with the shawl and possibly the evidence to solve the most unsolvable murder in English criminal history. But where do I start? That was the big question. 
 
 "I enlisted the help of Jari and we embarked on a three-and-a-half year journey. 
 
 "When we discovered the truth it was the most amazing feeling of my entire life." 
 
 Mr Edwards said the discovery 126 years after the murders proves beyond doubt that Kosminski - one of the six key suspects commonly cited as the Ripper - was the actual killer. 
 
 He said the shawl had been taken by acting Sergeant Amos Simpson, who was on duty the night of Eddowes's death and wanted it for his wife. 
 
 But horrified at the blood-soaked wrap, she never wore it, and it was stored away and passed down through the generations until it came to auction seven years ago. 
 
 Mr Edwards said: "Thank God the shawl has never been washed, as it held the vital evidence." 
 
 The author, who said he was part-inspired to take up the search for the killer after watching the Johnny Depp film From Hell about the Ripper murders, said police had identified Kosminski as a suspect, but never had enough evidence to bring him to trial. 
 
 Kosminski was a Polish Jewish immigrant who, fleeing persecution in his Russia-controlled homeland, came with his family to England in 1881 and lived in Mile End Old Town. 
 
 He was admitted to a string of lunatic asylums, where he died in 1899 of gangrene in the leg. 
 
 Naming Jack the Ripper will be published by Sidgwick & Jackson on Tuesday and costs £16.99 for a hardback.
– An amateur detective has written a new book that claims to reveal the real Jack the Ripper based on DNA evidence from a blood-soaked shawl found by one of the victims. Russell Edwards, author of Naming Jack the Ripper, writes in the Daily Mail that he bought the shawl at an auction and called upon a "world-renowned" DNA expert to help him identify the killer. He admits that most Ripper experts had dismissed the shawl, and "there was no evidence for its provenance," but it was apparently kept by the descendants of a law enforcement officer who took it home after Catherine Eddowes' murder in 1888. What Edwards found: a bloodstain that matched Eddowes' DNA, and a possible semen stain that matched a Polish Jew named Aaron Kosminski. Kosminski, who had fled Russian pogroms in the 1880s, was already "one of six key" Ripper suspects, says Edwards. But is the DNA match really a match? Edwards' expert, Dr. Jari Louhelainen, writes in the Mail that he used his own "vacuuming" method to "suck out" the cells—but because they're so old he had to use mitochondrial DNA rather than modern-day genomic DNA. (Another suspect, Walter Sickert, matched an earlier mitochondrial DNA test, but such matches "could be shared by anything from between 1% and 10% of the population," says a Ripper website.) What's more, Edwards' Kosminski matches—which were 99.2% and 100% on two DNA strands—weren't published in a peer-reviewed journal and may not have followed scientific safeguards, reports the Independent. Edwards, however, says he nailed it: "Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt," he tells the Mirror. "This is it now—we have unmasked him." (One detective says there is no Jack the Ripper.)