The latest effort to identify legendary serial killer Jack the Ripper pegged him as a native of the Russian Empire who fled to London to escape the "pogroms," a British tabloid reported.
DNA testing has identified Jack the Ripper as Aaron Kosminski, a hairdresser in the British capital's impoverished Whitechapel district, the Daily Mail reported Saturday.
The claim is based on the findings of the Finnish forensics expert Jari Louhelainen, who examined a shawl belonging to one of Jack the Ripper's five confirmed victims, all of whom were prostitutes.
Some of the DNA found on the garment matched that of Kosminski, Louhelainen concluded, based on DNA obtained from a descendant of the hairdresser's sister, the paper said.
The study could not be independently confirmed. The report also did not comment on the possibility of Kosminski getting his DNA on the prostitute's shawl in a manner unrelated to the woman's murder.
Kosminski, born in 1865, was a key suspect when police initially investigated the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper, but no case could be built against him.
The hairdresser was an ethnic Jew living in a part of Poland that belonged to Russia during the 19th century. According to the Daily Mail, he fled to Britain in the 1880s to escape from Jewish pogroms, organized mass attacks on Russian Jews.
Kosminski was placed in a mental asylum in 1891, where he remained until his death in in 1919.
Between five and 11 murders of women that took place from 1888 to 1891 in Whitechapel are credited to Jack the Ripper.
The highly publicized murders were never solved, giving rise to more than 100 theories about the identity of the killer.
Several Russian Empire natives made the list of suspects, including a second Polish groomer, a Polish-Jewish boot-maker and a Russian conman. More elaborate theories listed British Prince Albert Victor and "Alice in Wonderland" creator Lewis Carroll as possible perpetrators.
Contact the author at a.eremenko@imedia.ru
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