Jack the Ripper

After 137 years, one of the most famous cold cases of all times might have been solved thanks to the use of technology. DNA samples would have identified “Jack the Ripper.”

The man who is believed to have murdered at least five women in the Whitechapel district of London between August and November 1888, has been identified as Aaron Kosminsky, a 23-year-old barber who emigrated from Congress Poland to England in the late 1880’s. He arrived to London with his family escaping persecution by the Russian government, and died of gangrene at Leavesden hospital, almost 40 years later, in 1919. 

Prior to those murders, Kosminsky was diagnosed as suffering from mental problems back in 1885, three years before; which could drive us to the conclusion that it was maybe a negligence not having him admitted to a mental institution back then, therefore preventing the murders from happenning.

Among his victims were Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly whose body was found on Friday August 31st 1888 at what today is Durward Street in Whitechapel, London.