EXCLUSIVE: Inside the Detective Probe Which 'Solved' Jack The Ripper Case — Nearly 150 Years After Chilling Prostitute Slayings That STILL Haunt the World
Jack the Ripper's identity may have finally been discovered more than a century after the crimes were committed.
March 9 2025, Published 12:00 p.m. ET
Nearly a century and a half after Jack the Ripper's bloody murder spree terrorized the streets of London, the perp has finally been positively identified through cutting-edge DNA testing — bringing an end to one of the most enduring unsolved mysteries of all time, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
British historian and "Ripperologist" Russell Edwards declared he is "100 percent certain" the shadowy, knife-wielding killer was a Polish immigrant barber named Aaron Kosminski, who would have been 23 years old during the Ripper's rampage in the late 1800s.
The crucial evidence comes from a stained silk shawl that was found next to the mutilated, disemboweled body of 46-year-old Catherine Eddowes – one of at least five Ripper victims – after she'd been slaughtered in the wee hours of September 30, 1888. The shawl, which had long languished in storage at Scotland Yard, contained both blood from the victim and semen.
British historian Russell Edwards claims DNA evidence proves Aaron Kosminski was Jack the Ripper.
In 2006, rudimentary genetic testing on the shawl proved inconclusive. Eventually, the relic was put up for auction, and Edwards acquired it.
"Most Ripper experts dismissed it, but I believed I had hit on something no one else had noticed," said Edwards.
He believed the expensive shawl didn't belong to impoverished Eddowes but rather to the killer and was left as an obscure clue to taunt police.
Once in his possession, Edwards submitted the shawl to state-of-the-art DNA testing.
A stained shawl linked to victim Catherine Eddowes helped identify Jack the Ripper.
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Edwards recalled: "When we matched the DNA from the blood on the shawl with a direct female descendant of the victim, it was the singular most amazing moment of my life at the time.
"We tested the semen left on the shawl. When we matched that, I was dumbfounded that we actually had discovered who Jack the Ripper truly was."
It should come as no great surprise to other Ripperologists. Back in 1894, London's Assistant Chief Constable Sir Melville Macnaghten identified a suspect as a Polish Jew named Kosminski, and his name has been kicked around since then.
Kosminski died in a mental institution in 1919, but the pursuit for justice continues.
"We've got the proof," Edwards said, and added: "Now we need an inquest to legally name the killer."
