Kosminski and Victim DNA Match on Shawl

[Patrick S]

I've finished Edward's book and, perhaps owing to some prejudice going in, I found the "evidence" to be less than compelling. I'm not prepared to say that the science is rubbish. I'm not qualified. I will say that, in my experience, sound science does not have to be presented with exclamation points. The hypothoses speak for themselves. I don't find that to be the case here.

Having read the book on the heels of Rob House's book, I find I'm more intrigued by Kozminski these days. That is to say, as we've heard from Fish with resepct to Lechmere, "there's nothing to rule him out". Of couse, this isn't quite good enough and it's quite different than finding something to implicate him. Owing in large part to what I read in House's book and subsequent correspondence I've had with people more knowledgable than myself, I feel I'm not too far out on a limb in stating that Aaron Kozminski may not have been Jack the Ripper. But, Jack the Ripper was very likely to have been someone very much like Aaron Kozminski.

[lynn cates]

Whose?

Hello Ghost.

"If not from Mitre Square, then someone needs to explain how Simpson randomly came into possession of an object that most likely has Eddowes' blood on it."

Why Kate's?

Cheers.
LC

[Jeff Leahy]

*Snoopy dance of joy*

Profilers are criminologists. Some may also have degrees in psychology, but profiling comes from statistics of known criminals. Not from a diagnostic manual. A psychiatric condition has to be closely monitored for at least 6 months in order for a diagnosis to be made. One reason that not a lot of shrinks will try to diagnose a historical figure (unless it's really really obvious. Like Caligula.). Also, a lot of conditions mimic each other. Mad King George is a great example. His symptoms could be schizophrenia, mania, porphyria, heavy metal poisoning... a lot of things. But if there wasn't one tiny little note about odd colored urine, porphyria would never be on the table. Nor would the average person think of mania because they don't associate delusions with mania. But it happens. Most people think "he talks to trees, ergo he is schizophrenic". But he most likely wasn't. So yes. It takes many consultations, a lot of observation, some absolute truth from the patient, and a little imagination when it comes to diagnosing someone.

I can look at Kosminski and say he was delusional. And I can say he had scrupulosity. Those are the symptoms he described, I'm not taking a shot in the dark on that. But those are symptoms and not diseases. And many diseases have those symptoms. I cannot say he was schizophrenic. Just like if he had headaches and a fever, I couldn't say he had encephalitis. He could have had a cold. A profiler will tell you that he had a cold, because 70% of people with those symptoms had colds. A doctor will do tests, observe, and then give a specific diagnosis and course of treatment.

I think thats pretty fair Errata

OF course when you approach a psychiatrist and say can you look at these asylum records and give an opinion about someone who died over hundred years ago. The first thing they do is qualify that opinion and set a range of Caveate's. Thats because as you say to give a precise diagnosis they would need extensive observation of an individual.

Obviously that is not available in this case. So the people I spoke who gave their best stab at it (And please note didn't actually come to identical conclusions) given the information provided and qualified that opinion.

So the probability given that information is that Aaron suffered a form of Schizophrenia, and Dr Lars Davidson used the term Hebophrenic. But I've never claimed a precise one hundred percent diagnosis…Its qualified opinion.

Tis the nature of TV and the best that could be done given the circumstance

Yours Jeff

[Fisherman]

Fantasio:

Let's put it in this way: I think the "shawl" belonged to Jack. IF Jack was one of the then-suspects (Kosminky, Cohen, Druitt and so on) it's possible Simpson knew that and thought something like "if this guy is ever found guilty and hanged everything that belonged to him, especially everything with bloodstains, will be worth a lot".
That depends, of course, on when the "shawl" came into Simpson's hands - sooner or later it did, after all! But that's one thing we don't know and likely never will. So there's nothing we can do apart from speculation. Unless some miracle from great Amanda not-Sumner... who knows?

Who indeed? Well, then I see what you mean. And if itīs any comfort, I regard it as at least as possible as the Edwards story ...

Why not? He was one of the first known serial killers, and by far the most (in)famous at the time. Could he imagine JTR was going to be the first of many?

Maybe itīs just me, but I find it hard to think that he would have gone "Wow, once upon a time, this shawl will be worth heaps!". Of course, the later in the process he aquires it, the more likely your suggestion will be, so perhaps ...

Possibly. Or maybe he just stole the "shawl" and made up a cover story. The story cannot be true, so there must be a reason why he (or some relative of his) made it up.

Thereīs a reason alright! But the world is full of made-up stories and half-truths, so itīs anybodys guess.

Thanks for the greetings!

Youīre welcome, Fantasio!

The best,
Fisherman

[Errata]

Yeah, I was referring to the psychiatrists I've spoken to, talking about a specific analysis and treatment of someones medical condition. They seemed to believe that this could often take many consultations to come to an actuate diagnosis.

I think thats something rather different to a Profiler. To be honest my only experience of profilers is watching Robbie Coltrain play Cracker. Although I guess I site Bond as an early profiler and I've picked stuff up from reading about various cases over the year.

Jeff

*Snoopy dance of joy*

Profilers are criminologists. Some may also have degrees in psychology, but profiling comes from statistics of known criminals. Not from a diagnostic manual. A psychiatric condition has to be closely monitored for at least 6 months in order for a diagnosis to be made. One reason that not a lot of shrinks will try to diagnose a historical figure (unless it's really really obvious. Like Caligula.). Also, a lot of conditions mimic each other. Mad King George is a great example. His symptoms could be schizophrenia, mania, porphyria, heavy metal poisoning... a lot of things. But if there wasn't one tiny little note about odd colored urine, porphyria would never be on the table. Nor would the average person think of mania because they don't associate delusions with mania. But it happens. Most people think "he talks to trees, ergo he is schizophrenic". But he most likely wasn't. So yes. It takes many consultations, a lot of observation, some absolute truth from the patient, and a little imagination when it comes to diagnosing someone.

I can look at Kosminski and say he was delusional. And I can say he had scrupulosity. Those are the symptoms he described, I'm not taking a shot in the dark on that. But those are symptoms and not diseases. And many diseases have those symptoms. I cannot say he was schizophrenic. Just like if he had headaches and a fever, I couldn't say he had encephalitis. He could have had a cold. A profiler will tell you that he had a cold, because 70% of people with those symptoms had colds. A doctor will do tests, observe, and then give a specific diagnosis and course of treatment.

[Errata]

Organised/disorganised is outdated terminology. I've never been comfortable with the black/white, either/or rankings of profilers. And then years later they tag on organised/disorganised. Think of how ludicrous this is. You can't even call it profiling because it fits almost everyone. Hoarders are disorganised, OCD people are organised. The other 95% of us are a combination of both.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Hoarders are actually terribly organized. Just because we don't have a prayer of finding a 1992 phone bill in a hoarder's house doesn't mean he can't. He usually can. My family is full of them.

Organized vs. Disorganized has nothing to do with actual organization skills, though organized killers do tend to have them. It has to do with how much control they exert over the crime. Did they control the scene, the victim selection, the weapon, the moment of death etc. Someone like Ted Bundy did. Very much in control, therefore organized. Certainly Jeff Dahmer committed very messy crimes, but he too was organized. He controlled the crimes

Someone like Chase, or Mullin, or even Gein were disorganized, because the only control they had over the crime was whether or not to commit the murder. The victims were handy, not preselected, the murder weapons were what was available or close to hand, the timing was not great, the scenes were not in the killer's favor. I mean, Gein shot a woman he was going to use for skin. That's not the best way of killing someone for their hide. Thus fur trappers and not fur shooters. But he didn't think about it. Disorganized.

A murder does not have to be charted and planned to be organized. And a disorganized killer does not always act on the spur of the moment. It's all about whether or not they were attempting to control the murder, and how successful they were.

[pinkmoon]

None of this is true because the shawl couldn't have been at any of the murder sites.

[PaulB]

G'day Paul,

It's 2.38 am here and I should be a-kip long since. So I hope I make sense.

My writing style has always been forthright, sometimes ascerbic, but I don't like fraud accusations and I've no idea whether RE's shop is tacky or not, and as you say it's irrelevant. Perhaps we may differ on this, but I worry about certainty, whether it be in religion, politics, or anything else. I think RE's claims are over the top - way over the top. And now that I've read his book, and written a review which I'm floating around a couple of mates first, I think 'over the top' is being kind. The DNA evidence may yet be of great interest, but at the moment, much of it, from my reading, does not come close to supporting RE's contentions.

Anyway Paul, I must hit the hay. Busy day tomorrow.

Thanks anyway.

You say nothing with which I would disagree, including your reservations about certainty. Russell Edwards claims may well be way over the top. And, unless you have a publication lined up for your review, perhaps you might like to float it in the direction of Ripperologist...

[Roy Corduroy]

Good morning Jeff,

In response to my comment about contamination you replied -

Isn't that rather 'Baby' and 'Bathwater" ?

Jeff

Yes it is exactly. Contamination can't be measured. It doesn't have to. I'm not accusing anyone of hanky-panky either. Once something is contaminated to the extent of the shawl it's all the same. There is no blame. Only the idea itself of testing the thing is misguided.

Roy

[John G]

That does help, John. Moreover Edwards's claim that T1a1 is 'very typical' of Russo-Polish Jews seems very dubious.

Hi Mick,

Yes, it seems far more widespread than the Russo-Polish Jewish community and not particularly uncommon, even as a subclade.

[mickreed]

HI Ghost,

The figure of 7200 comes from a genealogy site but appears to be based on erroneous data, i.e. the sampling is based upon their own family tree database rather than a wider analysis.

Thus, Kosminski is haplogroup T1a1. Currently, haplogroup T1 makes up about 2,17% of the mtDNAs in England and Wales and 80% of the T1 tree falls within subclade T1a1, leaving us with a concentration of about 1.736%. See:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3376494/#!po=64.2857

The most relevant sections are p7 and s2 document, which you can download as an Excel file.

Now if we consider the population of London in 1888 then, based upon these figures, about 94000 Londoners would have shared Kosminski's mtDNA.
Of course, we do not know that the genetic material was deposited by a Londoner or in 1888.

It could also be argued that demographics have changed since 1888 but I would doubt that this would make much difference to the calculations: T1 represents about 2% of overall genetic diversity in Western Europe and around 3% in Eastern Europe and the Near East: see p7.

Hope this helps,

John

That does help, John. Moreover Edwards's claim that T1a1 is 'very typical' of Russo-Polish Jews seems very dubious.

[mickreed]

Hi Mick
As you say, anyone would want their publisher to market their book aggressively, and Russell Edwards, who isn't an author or a historian or anyone who might be cautious about so boldly expressing conclusions, but is a successful businessman who naturally understands aggressive marketing and sees nothing wrong with selling his product as hard as he can. That's fine, isn't it? The only thing we need concern ourselves with is whether or not he sincerely believes what he is saying, and, as yoou said, there is "bugger all" wrong with expressing a sincerely held belief.

All I am saying is that criticism should be restricted to the content of Russell Edwards book. It's not bandying libels like fraud. It's all the other personal stuff too, like rubbishing his shop for being tacky. Whether it is tacky or not, that has little or no bearing on the book. And, of course, aside from the people rubbishing the book without having read it, when they have had the opportunity to buy and read it, there's the matter of rubbishing the book without having read it in the national press, albeit only the Daily Star, which garners no criticism.

It's the evidence on which Russell Edwards' claim is based that matters - and is pretty much all that matters - and I am grateful to people like you and others, and Mr P over on the other site, who have done their best to provide some elucidation. The evidence is in the court of Dr Jari, not Edwards, and we need to see whether he condoned and condones Russell Edwards aggressively marketed conclusion.

G'day Paul,

It's 2.38 am here and I should be a-kip long since. So I hope I make sense.

My writing style has always been forthright, sometimes ascerbic, but I don't like fraud accusations and I've no idea whether RE's shop is tacky or not, and as you say it's irrelevant. Perhaps we may differ on this, but I worry about certainty, whether it be in religion, politics, or anything else. I think RE's claims are over the top - way over the top. And now that I've read his book, and written a review which I'm floating around a couple of mates first, I think 'over the top' is being kind. The DNA evidence may yet be of great interest, but at the moment, much of it, from my reading, does not come close to supporting RE's contentions.

Anyway Paul, I must hit the hay. Busy day tomorrow.

Thanks anyway.

[PaulB]

Mr Edwards deserves the personal stuff.

He has discredited a lot of authors who have studied for hours over years on end,and published books on other suspects,simply by stating quite clearly on the Titchmarsh show that Kos was JTR without a doubt 100%. He also deceived the public by doing so.

If it were me,and I had the confidence in what I was pushing,I wouldn't need to be aggressive.

Aggressiveness alienates people..and that is what he has managed to do with the vast majority of the Ripper community.

He seems to use the word "Official" for his tours..which smacks of an "I've arrived,move over" attitude.

This whole affair is bombastic and obnoxious,and the sooner it is over and done with,the better.

Rubbish. He hasn't discredited any authors of Ripper books and he has done no different to any author pushing a suspect. Whether he has expressed his sincerely held belief aggressively or not is neither here nor there, but it doesn'treflect well on Ripperologists if aggressivness can cause them to be unprofessional in their criticism and damn his book publicly and in the press without reading it. It is also utterly immaterial how he describes his tours. It's the content of the book that matters, in particular the science, which isn't Russell Edwards' area.

[John G]

@theagenes

I wanted to thank you for your careful take on the book. I just got done reading through some of those posts. When the number 7,200 possible people is used, has that been adjusted for coming from a male source? Are the figures really 1 of 7,200 people and 1 of 3,600 males? Or is it 1 in 7,200 males?

HI Ghost,

The figure of 7200 comes from a genealogy site but appears to be based on erroneous data, i.e. the sampling is based upon their own family tree database rather than a wider analysis.

Thus, Kosminski is haplogroup T1a1. Currently, haplogroup T1 makes up about 2,17% of the mtDNAs in England and Wales and 80% of the T1 tree falls within subclade T1a1, leaving us with a concentration of about 1.736%. See:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3376494/#!po=64.2857

The most relevant sections are p7 and s2 document, which you can download as an Excel file.

Now if we consider the population of London in 1888 then, based upon these figures, about 94000 Londoners would have shared Kosminski's mtDNA.
Of course, we do not know that the genetic material was deposited by a Londoner or in 1888.

It could also be argued that demographics have changed since 1888 but I would doubt that this would make much difference to the calculations: T1 represents about 2% of overall genetic diversity in Western Europe and around 3% in Eastern Europe and the Near East: see p7.

Hope this helps,

John

[anna]

Mr Edwards deserves the personal stuff.

He has discredited a lot of authors who have studied for hours over years on end,and published books on other suspects,simply by stating quite clearly on the Titchmarsh show that Kos was JTR without a doubt 100%. He also deceived the public by doing so.

If it were me,and I had the confidence in what I was pushing,I wouldn't need to be aggressive.

Aggressiveness alienates people..and that is what he has managed to do with the vast majority of the Ripper community.

He seems to use the word "Official" for his tours..which smacks of an "I've arrived,move over" attitude.

This whole affair is bombastic and obnoxious,and the sooner it is over and done with,the better.