A new book claims to have identified one of Britain's most notorious murderers, Jack the Ripper, citing new DNA evidence. The book names 23-year-old Polish Jew Aaron Kosminski as the man behind the gruesome killings that terrified London in the late 19th century. Jack the Ripper murdered and mutilated at least five women in the Whitechapel district of London in late 1888. He was never officially identified, and the 126-year-old murder mystery, which has inspired dozens of books and movies, had never been solved. Kosminski, a Polish immigrant who came to London in the early 1880s with his family to escape the pogroms of the time, lived in Whitechapel, in London's East End. He was committed to an insane asylum in 1891, where he died in 1919. "Naming Jack the Ripper," a book by British businessman Russell Edwards, claims to prove "without a doubt" that Kosminski -- one of Scotland Yard's prime suspects at the time -- was indeed Jack the Ripper. Edwards, who described himself as an "armchair detective," said the key to unmasking Jack the Ripper was a shawl belonging to one of his victims, Catherine Eddowes, on which Kosminski's blood was found. According to The Daily Mail, the shawl was removed from the scene of Eddowes' murder by the police sergeant in charge. Edwards purchased it at an auction in 2007. He then enlisted forensics expert Dr. Jari Louhelainen, a molecular biologist at Liverpool John Moores University who specializes in historic crime scenes, to run DNA tests on the fabric. Louhelainen was quoted by British media as having told Edwards, "The first strand of DNA showed a 99.2 percent match, as the analysis instrument could not determine the sequence of the missing 0.8 percent fragment of DNA. On testing the second strand, we achieved a perfect 100 percent match." "Kosminski has always been one of the three most credible suspects," Edwards told The Daily Mail. "What is certain is he was seriously mentally ill, probably a paranoid schizophrenic who suffered auditory hallucinations. "The circle is now complete. One of the greatest unsolved crime mysteries of all time has been solved through cutting edge science, historical research and a great deal of determination and good fortune."
