Johnny Depp inspired the hunt for the 'real' Jack the Ripper

A new book to be published this week claims to have pinponted once and for all the true identity of Jack the Ripper – a revelation made in part thanks to a 2001 film starring Johnny Depp.

It is claimed a 23-year-old Polish immigrant called Aaron Kosminski was responsible for terrorising London's East End in 1888, leaving a trail of at least five vicious and bloody murders in his wake.

In the book Naming Jack The Ripper – to be published in Australia this week by Pan Macmillan – the British author Russell Edwards names Kosminski as the Ripper after having evidence found at one of the crime scenes analysed using DNA technology.

Mr Edwards bought at auction the shawl believed to have belonged to one of the victims, Catherine Eddowes, and asked leading crime scene DNA expert Dr Jari Louhelainen to have it analysed. The shawl, it was found, contained DNA from both Ms Eddowes and her killer.

Mr Edwards says Kosminski was on a list of police suspects but there was never enough evidence to bring him to trial.

He says, however, that the DNA samples can now prove that Kosminski was "definitely, categorically and absolutely" the responsible for the East End killing spree.

"I've got the only piece of forensic evidence in the whole history of the case," he told the London Independent newspaper.

"I've spent 14 years working on it, and we have definitively solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was.

"Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt. This is it now – we have unmasked him."

It is believed a police officer called Amos Simpson took the shawl from near the body of Eddowes on the night of her death. Simpson gave the shawl to his wife, but she never wore it. It was passed down through the family until it was finally auctioned off.

Mr Edwards says he was already investigating the Jack the Ripper legend when he found out about the auction.

"I knew I wanted to buy the shawl and was prepared to pay a great deal of money for it," he writes in his book. "I hoped somehow to prove that it was genuine. Beyond that, I hadn't considered the possibilities.

"I certainly had no idea that this flimsy, badly stained, and incomplete piece of material would lead to the solution to the most famous murder mystery of all time: the identification of Jack the Ripper."

He says he was nothing more than an "armchair detective" when he started out.

"When my involvement in the 126-year-old case began," he writes. "I was just another armchair detective, interested enough to conduct my own extensive research after watching the Johnny Depp film From Hell in 2001. It piqued my curiosity about the 1888 killings when five – possibly more – prostitutes were butchered in London's East End."

It took Mr Edwards more than three years to analyse the shawl, which in more than 120 years had never been washed.

"Before buying it, I spoke to Alan McCormack, the officer in charge of the Crime Museum, also known as the Black Museum. He told me the police had always believed they knew the identity of the Ripper," he writes in the book, parts of which have been published in the London Daily Mail.

"Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, the officer in charge of the investigation, had named him in his notes: Aaron Kosminski, a Polish Jew who had fled to London with his family, escaping the Russian pogroms, in the early 1880s."

Mr Edwards says police had always believed Kosminski – who worked as an East End barber and later died in a mental asylum – to be "one of the three most credible suspects".

"What is certain is he was seriously mentally ill, probably a paranoid schizophrenic who suffered auditory hallucinations and described as a misogynist prone to 'self-abuse' – a euphemism for masturbation," writes Mr Edwards.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/johnny-depp-inspired-the-hunt-for-the-real -jack-the-ripper-20140908-10dpay.html#ixzz3CfiNWZip