Jack the Ripper: The Unsolved Case
Jack the Ripper was a serial killer from the late 1800’s that has never been identified. He was known for having murdered and mutilating at least five women in the east end of London, also known as the Whitechapel Murders.
Because the serial killer was never caught or identified, it’s not certain how many people he actually murdered; the Jack the Ripper website claims that it could’ve been as few as four victims or as many as eight. The website also claims that one of the possible reasons the killer was never identified is because of the labyrinth-like layout of the area where the murders occurred, containing lots of passageways and alleyways, few of which were lit by night.
While Jack the Ripper is known for being one of the most notorious serial killers–due to the fact that he’s never been identified–his killings only lasted from August to November of 1888, and over the centuries, people very interested in the case have come up with theories of who Jack the Ripper could’ve been.
History claims that the father of Winston Churchill, Lewis Carroll (author of “Alice in Wonderland”), and Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen Victoria and second in line to the British throne, were all possible suspects that people have theorized could’ve been the serial killer. There have also been speculations that Jack the Ripper was actually Jill the Ripper, and female suspects include Mary Pearcy, who was executed in 1890 after butchering her lover’s wife and child with a carving knife in a similar manner to that of the serial killer.
Even after all these theories, a man by the name of Russell Edwards thinks he’s finally identified who the killer was. In September of 1888, police discovered the mutilated body of Catherine Eddowes, the killer’s fourth victim, and the slaying bore the signature of the killer who had been terrorizing the town for weeks. After police completed their work at the crime scene, acting sergeant Amos Simpson made the unusual request to take home a blood splatter shawl found at the crime scene for his wife who was seamstress. Horrified, Simpson’s wife stashed the shawl in a box, never to be worn or washed, and the case grew cold, eventually causing authorities to close the file in 1892.
For centuries, the case has remained a mystery until 2007 when Russell Edwards purchased the shawl from a descendant of Simpson. Because the 126 year-old shawl had never been washed, Edwards was able to get help in performing a DNA analysis, and believes he identified the killer as a Polish immigrant named Aaron Kosminski.
According to History, police who worked the case at the time of the crime would not have been surprised to see Kosminiki’s name linked to the crime, and at the time Kosminki was among a handful of suspects. Kosminski was the youngest of seven children born in Klodawa, Poland in 1865. After the death of his father, his family fled Poland, which was being ruled and terrorized by Russia’s rulers, and they settled in London’s Whitechapel section in 1881.
It is believed that Kosminski was schizophrenic and he was admitted into an asylum in 1891 after attacking his sister with a knife. In the mid 1890’s, a person identified him as the person attacking one of the victims, but refused to testify, and lacking any hard evidence, police were never able to arrest Kosminski for the crimes, and he remained institutionalized until his death in 1919.
Though Edwards believes he has identified the serial killer, there are still plenty of skeptics who believe there are loopholes in the analysis, and that this isn’t the first time that DNA evidence has “cracked the case.”
To this day, the Jack the Ripper case remains one of the most famous cold cases, and whether or not DNA has surfaced, it can’t be confirmed who the killer really was or if they’ll ever truly be identified.
