A British private detective calls on the courts to reopen an investigation into Jack the Ripper so that his identity can finally be determined with certainty. He is supported in his approach by several victims’ families.
It’s a case that has been the subject of much discussion for over 135 years. In 1888, a man sowed terror in the Whitechapel district of London after slitting the throats and disemboweling five women. Crimes which earned him the nickname Jack the Ripper or “Jack The Ripper”, but no conviction, because the serial killer could never be identified. A mission that a private detective named Russell Edwards has been trying to tackle for several years and which he claimed to have solved in a book published in 2014.
For him, Jack the Ripper was Aaron Kosminski, a barber and Polish emigrant aged 23 at the time of the events, described as someone “paranoid” and suffering from hallucinations. In 2023, Russell Edwards obtained what he considers further proof of his claim. In 2007, the detective bought at auction the bloody shawl found on the body of Catherine Eddowes, the fourth victim of Jack the Ripper, killed on the night of September 30, 1888. And after DNA analysis, using the kinship technique, the The man discovered that the DNA of the victim and Aaron Kosminski were mixed together.
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Since then, Russell Edwards has assured the “Daily Mail” that he had found the potential motive for Aaron Kosminski’s crimes: the man would have had links with the Freemasons, who would have both motivated his murders and protected him from law enforcement.
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“A form of justice for the victims”
Today, Russell Edwards tells the English media that he has hired a legal team to put together the strongest possible case to ask British justice to reopen an investigation to establish with certainty the identity of Jack the Ripper.
Because in 2015, a British surgeon, Wynne Weston-Davies, alleged that the Whitechapel killer was a journalist in charge of the “news” section of his newspaper, Francis Spurzheim Craig. Then in 2023, the great-great-granddaughter of a British police officer who participated in the hunt for Jack the Ripper, Sarah Bax Horton, also claimed to have discovered the identity of the serial killer, but had not arrived at the same name as her two colleagues. According to her, it was a man named Hyam Hyams.
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Russell Edwards is supported in his approach by the descendants of Aaron Kosminski – who died in an asylum in 1919 – and Catherine Eddowes. “Having the real killer legally named in court would be a form of justice for the victims, whose names have been forgotten by the public,” Karen Miller, the three-time great-granddaughter of Catherine Eddowes, told the Daily. Mail”. “We have the evidence, now we need this investigation to legally name the killer. It would mean a lot to me, to my family and to many people if this crime was finally solved. »
The descendants of Mary Ann Nichols, known as Polly, also assured that “it would mean a lot to finally be able to name the killer and to be able to turn the page on this case”. “There was no justice for these victims at the time. These women were considered mere prostitutes, as if they had no importance. » If permission was granted, the matter would be referred to a High Court judge for review.
Jack the Ripper’s five victims were Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. All were prostitutes, which partly explains why this investigation had gaps.
