Kosminski and Victim DNA Match on Shawl

[Theagenes]

They wouldn't all be in England, would they? But even going to the extreme of supposing they were, that 5,000 would still translate to a tiny probability of a chance match. A fraction of one tenth of one percent.

The people who are suggesting this requires no explanation are obviously wrong. Of course it needs to be explained.

Actually, I'm thinking that they very well could all be in England. Based on the math with the numbers we've been given I don't think the common female ancestor to first have this mutation couldn't have much earlier than a few generations before Catherine otherwise it would be more common. I guess it depends on how many generations her family had been in England.

But in any case based on the fact that Edwards estimated only a dozen in London I think they were basing it on London's population. Of course a dozen is too low as we know that Catherine herself had 11 siblings and three kids and they would have all had it. But a couple dozen in London and 100 or so across the country is pretty darn small.

[mickreed]

Hello Mick.

"there was an upsurge in the earlier-1880s."

Actually, that was Clan-na-Gael and the Invincibles--a breakaway group from the IRB.

Cheers.
LC

Of course, strictly you're right Lynn, but the term Fenian was used very loosely very often. It was still being used when I was a lad to describe Irish nationalists.

[RockySullivan]

So most of you believe that eddowes blood is on the shawl? And the ripper brought it to the crime scene, killed her on it, and left it behind without giving any thought that it was a clue that could be traced back to him?

[Chris]

So most of you believe that eddowes blood is on the shawl? And the ripper brought it to the crime scene, killed her on it, and left it behind without giving any thought that it was a clue that could be traced back to him?

How on earth do you get from "these results need to be explained" to that?

[GUT]

So most of you believe that eddowes blood is on the shawl? And the ripper brought it to the crime scene, killed her on it, and left it behind without giving any thought that it was a clue that could be traced back to him?

G'Day Rocky,

Well as I understand it Mr Edwards proposes that it was a clue that Kos left to point towards his next murder [though he then got the day of his next murder wrong].

[RockySullivan]

How on earth do you get from "these results need to be explained" to that?

I'm just saying if the probability is that statically sound and then it is eddowes blood. Not saying I believe the DNA is even real but thank you for explaining it so much as I can at least understand

[RockySullivan]

Right I forgot about that part thanks gut. Doesn't really fit with the rippers MO.

[Jonathan H]

He was there

I would like to publicly thank Paul Begg for the invaluable help and encouragement he has afforded me, and the critical primary sources he has found and passed on to me for my research over the years.

Yet our interpretations of the limited and contradictory material is very different.

That's part of the fun, or what can be fun if people calm down.

To Hatchett

Consider this.

Melville Macnaghten was there in early 1891 when Aaron Kosminski was permanently sectioned. He knew that the reason for the poor man's mental infirmity had been changed to "self-abuse".

Yet Macnaghten backdated Aaron Kosminski's incarceration to "March, 1889".

Think about it--he backdated an event that had happened while he was on the Force.

The usual response to that is that he was dealing with all this second-hand, and so did not know, in 1894, that he was backdating an even from 1891 into 1889.

Really? The same hands-on chief who wrote to an asylum to check up on Ostrog, who searched the East End for Coles' murderer with detectives, who spent many fruitless nights prowling the East End trying to catch the Ripper, who went to see the prostitute-witness who exonerated Adolf Beck--by himself.

Second-hand compared to whom?

Compared to Anderson and Swanson? Who believed that "Kosminski" was only about for mere "weeks" before being "safely caged", presumably in early 1889. Who was supposedly identified by a Jewish witness, who refused to testify?

And who was conveniently deceased soon after being identified, when he actually lived to 1919.

Whereas Macnaghten knew that Kosminski was alive, and out and about for a long time after the Kelly murder.

In his memoirs Mac dropped this suspect altogether (along with Ostrog) as nothing. He judged him to be a nothing suspect.

In all the rush to embrace an artifact with zero provenance--worse its back story cannot be true--and the dodgy DNA over-reach the police sleuth who can be shown to know more about this suspect at the time dismissed him.

Could he have been wrong? Of course. But is that probable? Or, is it more likely at least compared to what we are being offered today?

[Theagenes]

But stand for what? Surely, at best, only that Kosminski (or a rellie) and Eddowes (or a rellie) had come into contact with the shawl.

Now that would be hugely interesting and significant but not proof of guilt, just the basis for a line of enquiry.

I haven't yet got the book. It's not available in any form here until 30 September. It'd take that long for it to come by post, so I'll wait. My issues with it, apart from the complete lack of citations mentioned by Adam (which suggests lax work or a lousy choice of publisher) are only to do with the hyperventilated claims by the author of definitive proof of K's guilt.

If the claims made by Edwards are substantiated by Louhelainen (and that is a very key "if"), then I would say the connection between Eddowes and the shawl is very solid based on the rare mtDNA. This is a bloody artifact that was advertised as being from the Eddowes murder in 1990, well before DNA fingerprinting was in use and the mtDNA recovered from matches here incredibly closely.

The connection with Kosminski is less solid at this point. So far all we really have is a mtDNA match. We don't know how close that match is. Is it a common haplotype? I would think if it had a rare variation like Eddowes we would have heard about it. It appears that it either the mtDNA or the Y-DNA may be T1a1, which may or may not be indicative of an Ashkenazi Jewish background depending on which one it is. But it sounds like Edwards may have garbled this part so we don't know.

Ironically, the presence of nDNA in the semen means that further tests could probably definitively ID Kosminski -- or definitely exclude him. But the publisher and/or Edwards didn't want to wait for that. Almost makes you wonder if they just didn't want to roll the dice.

So it is very possible that there could be mixed results here even if we accept as a given everything that has been stated thus far. It could very well be that the shawl is indeed from the murder of Eddowes as has always been claimed, but the semen donor is not Kosminski but some other unknown East End Polish Jew that has the same haplotype as he does.

A lot of people here are treating these results as if they are just one big monolithic DNA experiment, but actually they are two very separate tests (the blood and the semen) with with different results and implications.

[lynn cates]

bemused

Hello Mick. Thanks.

Right you are. But the English continued to use the term for the "physical force party."

The Irish were highly bemused and "played along."

Cheers.
LC

[Theagenes]

So most of you believe that eddowes blood is on the shawl? And the ripper brought it to the crime scene, killed her on it, and left it behind without giving any thought that it was a clue that could be traced back to him?

Well those two very different things.

If the claims Edwards has made about the rarity of Eddows mtDNA are substantiated by the DNA scientists and other DNA experts agree that the work is sound, then yes statistically-speaking the blood on the shawl is almost certainly Eddowes.

But as to whether the shawl belonged to her or the killer or whether it happened to be lying nearby or Grandpa Amos came by hours later and sopped up some blood with it to have as a souvenier (like people did with hankerchiefs after Dillinger was shot), I have know idea. I can speculate but it would just be guessing.

[lynn cates]

questions

Hello Theagenes.

"It could very well be that the shawl is indeed from the murder of Eddowes as has always been claimed"

But can anyone give a coherent explanation as to:

1. How the shawl got to Mitre?

2. Why it was not inventoried?

Cheers.
LC

[RockySullivan]

Well those two very different things.

If the claims Edwards has made about the rarity of Eddows mtDNA are substantiated by the DNA scientists and other DNA experts agree that the work is sound, then yes statistically-speaking the blood on the shawl is almost certainly Eddowes.

But as to whether the shawl belonged to her or the killer or whether it happened to be lying nearby or Grandpa Amos came by hours later and sopped up some blood with it to have as a souvenier (like people did with hankerchiefs after Dillinger was shot), I have know idea. I can speculate but it would just be guessing.

That's an interesting theory that it was used to soak up some blood. There was never any semen at any of the crimes scenes, wouldnt Koz have had a good wank on the body?

[mickreed]

Whereas Macnaghten knew that Kosminski was alive, and out and about for a long time after the Kelly murder.

In his memoirs Mac dropped this suspect altogether (along with Ostrog) as nothing. He judged him to be a nothing suspect.

In all the rush to embrace an artifact with zero provenance--worse its back story cannot be true--and the dodgy DNA over-reach the police sleuth who can be shown to know more about this suspect at the time dismissed him.

Could he have been wrong? Of course. But is that probable? Or, is it more likely at least compared to what we are being offered today?

And, moreover, Kosminski was transferred to Leavesden, an asylum "for the quiet and harmless imbecile"

Whatever JtR was, he wasn't harmless

[RockySullivan]

"t is possible that the alleged descendants’ DNA could have possibly contaminated the shawl since both were tested in the same laboratory. Comparisons to other studies point out that other professionals use different methods to ensure that cross contamination is not possible.
Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1459498/jac...z7GjfKKHjup.99