Notorious killer Jack the Ripper's true identity is still anonymous

The true identify of Jack the Ripper has once again been questioned, as the scientist who carried out the DNA analysis, which supposedly revealed the definitive identity of the notorious killer, has apparently made a fundamental error.

A 23-year-old Polish immigrant barber called Aaron Kosminski was "definitely, categorically and absolutely" the man who had brutally murdered at least five women on the streets of Whitechapel in the East End of London in 1888, according to a detailed analysis of DNA extracted from a silk shawl allegedly found at the scene of one of his murders, the Independent reported.

The scientist, Jari Louhelainen, is said to have made an "error of nomenclature" when using a DNA database to calculate the chances of a genetic match. If true, it would mean his calculations were wrong and that virtually anyone could have left the DNA that he insisted came from the Ripper's victim.

The latest flurry of interest in Kosminski, who died in a lunatic asylum, aged 53, stems from a book, Naming Jack the Ripper, published earlier in 2014, by Russell Edwards, a businessman who bought the shawl in 2007 on the understanding that it was the same piece of cloth allegedly found next to Eddowes.

A spokesperson for publishers Sidgwick and Jackson said that the author stands by his conclusions and they are investigating the reported error in scientific nomenclature.

However, this does not change the DNA profiling match and the probability of the match calculated from the rest of the haplotype data and the conclusion reached in the book, that Kosminski was Jack the Ripper, relies on much more than this one figure, spokesperson further added.