New Book Claims to Identify Jack the Ripper Once and For Allbut Can This Case Ever Be Officially Solved?

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Perhaps some mysteries just aren't meant to be solved.

But that adage hasn't stopped a hundred years' worth of conspiracy theories regarding the identity of Jack the Ripper, the still-never-officially identified serial killer who viciously murdered at least five women in London's Whitechapel district in 1888 and has been fodder for endless books, films and TV shows ever since.

Theories have been advanced over the years by everyone from Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle to best-selling mystery novelistPatricia Cornwell, and the list of suspects has grown to encompass a number of doctors, convicted criminals and even a member of the royal family (a royal conspiracy was the conclusion creepily settled upon in the2001 Johnny Depp thriller From Hell, based on the graphic novel of the same name).

So, another year, another theory, and this time Polish hairdresser Aaron Kosminski has been fingered as the culprit in the new book Naming Jack the Ripper.

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"I am a hundred percent certain," author and self-described "armchair detective" Russell Edwards told the U.K.'s ITV News. "Definitive proof, conclusively proven, put the case to bedwe've done this."

Edwards claims that DNA evidence, found on a blood-and-semen-spattered scarf that was passed down from generation to generation from the wife of a cop on the beat at the time (who supposedly took the scarf from one of the crime scenes to give as a gift, ew) and bought at auction, unequivocably identifies Kosminski as the killer.

"Incredibly, it was stowed without ever being washed," Edwards said about the scarf in an interview with the Mail on Sunday.As the book reportedly details, genetics expertDr. Jari Louhelainen, asenior lecturer of molecular biology at Liverpool John Moores University, concluded that Kosminski was the killer after he found that DNA from semen residue on the scarf matched DNA taken from a so-called female descendant of the suspect's.

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New Book Claims to Identify Jack the Ripper Once and For Allbut Can This Case Ever Be Officially Solved?

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