All the experts agreed: we would never know the true identity of the world’s most famous serial killer. It has taken 136 years of theorizing and speculation, plus the determination of Russell Edwards, a twenty-first-century businessman fascinated by the nineteenth-century social history of London’s East End, to finally solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper. In February 2014, Russell received stunning DNA results and revealed the true identity and name of Jack the Ripper. In the decade since, he has continued his quest to prove the identity of the Ripper beyond the shadow of a doubt. The key to the solution lay in the sole piece of physical evidence to have survived from the murders of five Whitechapel women by the Ripper in 1888. In the early morning of Sunday, 30th September 1888, a shawl lay bloodied alongside the body of the Ripper’s fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes. A Metropolitan Police officer, PC Amos Simpson, was attending the crime scene as an acting sergeant and was permitted to take the shawl away. It remained in his family until the author bought it in 2007, following a public auction. But could the shawl’s provenance be proved? Russell set about authenticating the shawl by commissioning scientists at Liverpool John Moores University, led by Dr Jari Louhelainen, to use modern forensic techniques to analyze DNA extracted from stains on the shawl – DNA from both Catherine Eddowes and her suspected killer. In this book, Russell examines the police reports, eyewitness accounts, post-mortems, and all known information on the lives of the victims, in his search for vital clues. With the help of modern forensic techniques, Russell’s ground-breaking discoveries provide conclusive answers to many of the most challenging mysteries surrounding the case.
