Submitting the Dear Boss envelope for DNA testing

[tanta07]

Why specifically is it the Dear Boss letter that's being chosen for this analysis? The Dear Boss letter was almost certainly a hoax, perpetuated by an enterprising journalist. Any DNA extracted from it would only point you to THAT guy's bloodline, not the killer. I'm of the opinion that if any Ripper letter has even the slightest chance of being authentic (from the killer himself), it's only the From Hell letter that came with the Lusk kidney. And I even have my doubts about that one.

I suppose analyzing these letters for DNA would make for an interesting exercise, mostly to see if any usable DNA can even be extracted. But to identify the killer? Not likely. On the other hand, if DNA can be used to confirm that it was a journalist who sent the letter, it would be kind of interesting to put that to bed once and for all.

[DJA]

Toddle off and do some useless maps.

There are people here with positive intent.

[JeffHamm]

Certainly, because we had a name to start with, modern descendants of King Richard III would have been traceable through a family tree. With the 'stamplicker', we have nothing unless we begin looking at the descendants of the Enterprising journalist.

Hi,

Well, if there were unlimited funds, and if it were possible to obtain a useable DNA profile from the back of the stamp (the first is not true obviously, and the latter is unlikely as far as I understand), then one could do the sort of genealogical analysis that has been successful in some cold cases. To the extent it would narrow the search sufficiently to provide an identification is unknown until done, of course, but presumably it would narrow down to a set of candidates who could become the focus of more focused comparisons.

I suspect, though, that no useable DNA profile would result, but as I'm have no expertise in that field, my suspicions do not mean anything one way or the other. The cost for such an endeavor would be prohibitive I would imagine. So while the will might be there, the funds are not, particularly as the starting point is that the expected outcome is to find the letter to be a hoax.

If we had the From Hell letter, that might be of more interest as there is more pointing towards it being a possible genuine letter, and even that has never been universally agreed upon.

- Jeff

[DJA]

Henry Gawen Sutton.

[Wickerman]

Great to see your positive attitude erobitha.

Someone is probably going to have to fund this.

Any casebookers interested as a group,not going to be cheap.

Might as well start with the obvious then, the descendants of; Tom Bulling, Charles Moore & Fred Best, to keep the cost down.

[Wickerman]

A different target, yes, I imagine so.

[DJA]

I have a better target

[Wickerman]

The remains of King Richard III, who died in 1485, were identified by comparing his mtDNA with that of two matrilineal descendants of his sister who were alive in 2013, 527 years after he died.

Certainly, because we had a name to start with, modern descendants of King Richard III would have been traceable through a family tree. With the 'stamplicker', we have nothing unless we begin looking at the descendants of the Enterprising journalist.

[DJA]

Great to see your positive attitude erobitha.

Someone is probably going to have to fund this.

Any casebookers interested as a group,not going to be cheap.

[erobitha]

If complete DNA could successfully be extracted it would be entered into a DNA database like GEDmatch or a similar alternative. If we're lucky it could come back with a match to a modern descendant. As you said it would most likely be a distant relative especially with the amount of time that's past. It would then be a daunting process of trying to trace that person's ancestors back in time until we had all the relatives possible who were in London at the time the letters were sent. This could either be easy, say if the match had a complete family tree or had been tracking ancestors on Ancestry already and might be willing to share it, or extremely difficult, certain DNA can have many false positives or the match might be in a different country with a extremely common surname. At any point in the process we could hit a brick wall or dead end.

I think the sender could easily be a hoax but there's still a chance it could be the Ripper. What I believe is to establish the author of the Dear Boss and Saucy Jack postcard is an important part of the overall case. Without these two correspondences Jack the Ripper would likely be know as the Whitechapel Murderer and the identity that is Jack the Ripper wouldn't be what it is. Handwriting analysis (whilst very unreliable) does suggest that the Dear Boss letter and Saucy Jack postcard are written by the same hand. IMO after evaluating every Ripper correspondence there are 5 (6 if you include GSG) that are of relevance to the case.

Police at the time of the murders believed the Saucy Jack, Dear Boss and From Hell letters were the only three genuine ones. Regardless of whether they are legitimate or hoaxes the Saucy Jack postcard and Dear Boss letter created the identity of Jack the Ripper. The author could easily be Thomas Bulling or Fred Best but we already have two possibilities of potential journalists who claimed to have written them and it couldn't have been both. The From Hell letter is likely lost forever and the Saucy Jack postcard has no stamp so there's no place the sender could've left saliva on it. That leaves the Dear Boss envelope as the only avenue to attempt.

The good news is that the National Archives have allowed some DNA testing on materials previously so you have some precedence.

I highly doubt they will send it off to some laboratory somewhere - so your best bet might be to make it as risk free as possible for them. I’d imagine they might allow a scientist to go to the archives and see if they can extract anything direct off the paper before they allow it to be sent off-site.

I have a friend who happens to be a professor of machine learning and DNA sequencing at Copenhagen University. He was part of the team that successfully profiled the full genome of a dead horse frozen in Siberian permafrost over 500,000 years ago. I’ll ask him what he would do.

[DJA]

Easier than finding astatine 211

[Astatine211]

Fair enough, but lets assume the sender left their DNA on the back of the stamp. What is the best they can hope to come up with?, some modern descendant, five generations removed? Assuming they test the population of the UK afterwards?
Do you believe the sender was the Ripper?

If complete DNA could successfully be extracted it would be entered into a DNA database like GEDmatch or a similar alternative. If we're lucky it could come back with a match to a modern descendant. As you said it would most likely be a distant relative especially with the amount of time that's past. It would then be a daunting process of trying to trace that person's ancestors back in time until we had all the relatives possible who were in London at the time the letters were sent. This could either be easy, say if the match had a complete family tree or had been tracking ancestors on Ancestry already and might be willing to share it, or extremely difficult, certain DNA can have many false positives or the match might be in a different country with a extremely common surname. At any point in the process we could hit a brick wall or dead end.

I think the sender could easily be a hoax but there's still a chance it could be the Ripper. What I believe is to establish the author of the Dear Boss and Saucy Jack postcard is an important part of the overall case. Without these two correspondences Jack the Ripper would likely be know as the Whitechapel Murderer and the identity that is Jack the Ripper wouldn't be what it is. Handwriting analysis (whilst very unreliable) does suggest that the Dear Boss letter and Saucy Jack postcard are written by the same hand. IMO after evaluating every Ripper correspondence there are 5 (6 if you include GSG) that are of relevance to the case.

Police at the time of the murders believed the Saucy Jack, Dear Boss and From Hell letters were the only three genuine ones. Regardless of whether they are legitimate or hoaxes the Saucy Jack postcard and Dear Boss letter created the identity of Jack the Ripper. The author could easily be Thomas Bulling or Fred Best but we already have two possibilities of potential journalists who claimed to have written them and it couldn't have been both. The From Hell letter is likely lost forever and the Saucy Jack postcard has no stamp so there's no place the sender could've left saliva on it. That leaves the Dear Boss envelope as the only avenue to attempt.

Outside of these three, two other letters which I believe have significance to the case are the 2nd November 1888 letter to Yarmouth police from 14 Dorset Street due to it being sent from Dorset Street a week before MJK murder, the other links to Yarmouth in the case and the possible code about the pubs in Whitechapel when discussing the Yarmouth piers. I have been unable to track the letter and I am unsure if it has survived.

The other letter was the one sent to Mrs McCarthy on 12th November 1888. The significance of this one was a threat to scare her from testifying at an inquest. This is the only time something like this occurred in the case and due to John McCarthy's importance to the MJK murder it makes you wonder why someone would want to stop her from being a witness. I believe this letter did have an envelope with a stamp and is currently in the national archives. At some point in the future I think it might be worth seeing if this one could yield any DNA.

Last thing I want to say about the Dear Boss letter is even today I still see people mainly unfamiliar with the case or very new to it use the Saucy Jack / Dear Boss letter as a source of theories or speculation. When I was new to the case one of the first thing I did was read the three main letters. To clarify once and for all if they're hoaxes and even discovering the true author behind an important aspect of the case is worthwhile to me.

Another thing is even if we don't get a complete DNA profile and partial one from degraded DNA can still be used to compare and exclude with complete DNA. We could in theory try comparing partial DNA with relatives of suspects if they are interested to see if there's an match or none. Maybe we would even find an ancestor of Thomas Bulling or Fred Best to see if either would match the partial DNA.

I know it's a longshot, but I feel longshots are our best bet at solving this case.

Astatine

[DJA]

Fair enough, but lets assume the sender left their DNA on the back of the stamp. What is the best they can hope to come up with?, some modern descendant, five generations removed? Assuming they test the population of the UK afterwards?
Do you believe the sender was the Ripper?

The remains of King Richard III, who died in 1485, were identified by comparing his mtDNA with that of two matrilineal descendants of his sister who were alive in 2013, 527 years after he died.

[Wickerman]

If there's DNA on the back of the stamp it should be an uncontaminated sample and it will be directly from the author when they licked it. Since DNA forensics weren't around in 1888 it's unlikely the sender of the letter would've worried about licking their own stamps.

Fair enough, but lets assume the sender left their DNA on the back of the stamp. What is the best they can hope to come up with?, some modern descendant, five generations removed? Assuming they test the population of the UK afterwards?
Do you believe the sender was the Ripper?

[Astatine211]

If the envelope was laminated then de-laminated for the purposes if mDNA testing, there is every liklihood the DNA will be too degraded.

Lamination is of deep concern to me too. I did however find a photo of the Dear Boss envelope in the archives taken in 2006 which showed it in a protective plastic bag rather than laminated so hopefully there's a small chance it never was.

The Openshaw letter was tested in the early 2000s and since then DNA testing has progressed massively and much smaller samples can be recovered to make a complete profile so I'm hoping there's also a chance with the new technology and methods developed over the last couple of years a result might be yielded.

Even if inquiring is ultimately unsuccessful which is very likely I still feel it's worth a shot as there's no harm in asking.