Oddity Shop
This podcast examines the oddities of the world...Cryptids to Conspiracies, Cults to Curiosities, Myths to Mysteries, and so much more! Stop by the shop, where the bizarre is always on sale... Each week your curators, Kara Perakovic and Zach Palmer will be opening the shop and sharing stories with you.
Oddity Shop
Blood on the Shawl: DNA Reveals Jack the Ripper's Identity
Welcome To The Oddity Shop, Where The Bizarre is Always on Sale. This week, your Curator Zach, As promised has the solved tale of the Identity of Jack The Ripper
The mystery that has perplexed investigators and captivated true crime enthusiasts for over a century has finally been solved. Jack the Ripper, the shadowy figure who terrorized London's Whitechapel district in 1888, now has a name backed by science: Aaron Kosminski.
We journey through the fog-covered streets of Victorian London, where five women—Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly—met their brutal ends at the hands of a killer with surgical precision.
We travel forward to the breakthrough that came when researcher Russell Edwards acquired a blood-stained shawl found near victim Catherine Eddowes. After years of forensic testing, mitochondrial DNA analysis in 2019 matched genetic material on the shawl to living descendants of Aaron Kosminski, a Polish barber who had been among the original suspects!
References:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper
- https://xaviernewswire.com/2025/02/25/ripping-up-the-truth-how-detectives-finally-found-jack-the-ripper/
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14234461/Descendants-Jack-Rippers-victims-DNA-breakthrough.html
- https://nypost.com/2025/02/15/world-news/jack-the-rippers-identity-revealed-after-dna-breakthrough-historian/
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/ripper_jack_the.shtml#:~:text=Between%20August%20and%20November%201888,took%20place%20on%2031%20August.
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jack-the-Ripper
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I want to dance with the mothman at the ID shop, bathed in the moonlight at the ID shop. Creep through the graveyard to the ID shop. The door's always open at the Oddity Shop. What's up, you little oddballs?
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Oddity Shop, the podcast, where we tell you creepy, odd, weird, strange, bizarre stories from around the globe.
Speaker 1:I'm your curator, kara, and this is my wonderful gay curator, zachary, and the only reason I'm saying that is because his shirt says, of course, I'm gay.
Speaker 2:OK, well, you're calling me out, ok, so I had to wear this day. So this is fun. It actually says of course I'm gay, I went to Catholic school and then it has a little Catholic school on here. Of course I'm gay, I went to Catholic school and then it has a little Catholic school on here. This is very fun. I had so much to do yesterday and I checked the mail and I had this shirt in my mailbox with no information on who it was from. So, of course, instead of doing so he calls me.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so I get a call. I'm on the phone with my mom, so I don't answer he calls. Again I had to say I'm on the phone with mom and he's like did you send me a? Shirt no.
Speaker 2:I like I can't focus on anything else. I have to get to the bottom of the mystery. I posted it on Facebook, I don't know why I didn't figure it out, but I should have asked Chelsea sooner. And I so I text her and I go did you send me a T-shirt? And her response is depends on if it made you chuckle or not. Ah, that's so good. So I said I'm crying, laughing, um, I said but also, this mystery is so fun, but I have so many things to do. She goes yes, it was me. The algorithm blessed me on that one, that's hilarious.
Speaker 1:Oh god, we were. We were talking on the phone, we were trying to figure out who it was. We like there was different clues from different reasons. I'm not gonna go like could, could it be this person? It wouldn't be this person Like we had all this like mapped out, like one of those what's it called Like, with the pictures and the string.
Speaker 2:One of my top suspects was Megan from South Dakota.
Speaker 1:And I'm like I almost texted her she commented on Facebook.
Speaker 2:She's like this is totally something I would do, but it's not me. I'm like I almost asked you girl, oh, so funny. Oh, my god, anyway, so that was fun. That's your new thing, that's my new thing, and that's about all that I've got, except for I'm starting to get the spring cleaning vibes and starting to like I haven't started it yet, but I'm starting to like surprised plan out the order of things so for those that don't know, if you haven't been here long enough, zachary does his spring cleaning and he does a room in his house a day.
Speaker 2:Usually I try to get it done in a day and I do a couple in a week. Now, last year I didn't, you went crazy.
Speaker 1:No, two years ago I went crazy.
Speaker 2:Last year I was well spring last year different for different reasons. So this year I need to do like a double clean and I'm really excited. So that's my boring life which is very nice.
Speaker 1:That's like a good feeling. All right, the only thing that I have before we open up the shop is just, it's hilarious. We've been sent it a million times uh, allegedly, but it's proven that she was trying to hire a hitman, or did hire a hitman actually, because she gave a deposit to have him killed, which is not funny. It is not funny, but what the hell? And so zach's like I haven't even really read up on it.
Speaker 1:So the gist of it, for those that don't know, is that I don't know how, but she somehow got in contact with an inmate and a phone got smuggled to this inmate. So they were texting back and forth, which hello rookie move. Basically, that she was telling ghost adventurers like their filming schedule when he was going to be there, what hours where. Like their filming schedule when he was going to be there, what hours where. Um, so all this stuff, uh, at one text message was something like he's home alone, sleeping, like I need confirmation that it's been done. Is it done yet? Like yeah. So the phone ended up getting confiscated by one of the um correctional officers or somebody there, which is like girl the hell is wrong with you.
Speaker 1:And then one of the texts was even like. This is not verbatim, but it was something like am I stupid or am I foolish for wanting to have him murdered instead of just divorcing him? Here's yes, yes you are.
Speaker 2:Here's the thing had she gone through with it, that murder would have been solved so quickly, because that man knows how to use paranormal equipment. Okay, all you'd have to do is set up one spirit box and you would know everything.
Speaker 1:Aaron, are you there Exactly, aaron. Aaron, are you there, right, right Not?
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Can you imagine.
Speaker 2:Anyway that's just something funny that we have to talk about that. That, yeah, I got sent that article a couple times I it is fun, well, fun. But you know what I?
Speaker 1:mean, it's just, it's fun because it didn't happen. She got caught, so it's fun for us to talk about. What I do think would be cool for us um, you guys let us know, especially for our patreon listeners is to have like mini episodes of fun stuff like this that has to do with this that we just record like a little thing about it. I think that would be fun.
Speaker 2:We'll let us know, okay, so real quick, though, before we open the shop, do you have anything else? Nope, okay. One thing that we need to say is, if you're listening to this on the day this comes out and you bought a ticket to our event, we are so excited to see you in two days at eloise asylum.
Speaker 2:That's number one I'm gonna sweat and number two request of you guys we need more write-in stories. So write-ins, call-ins I don't care if you carry your pigeon it to me, get us some stories, okay I have one thing really quick, mar Mariel, are you all right?
Speaker 1:Because, girl, I haven't heard from you in a while. I actually I was going to message her on Patreon, dm her. But, girl, you good.
Speaker 2:You know, though, we need to give a shout out to Lisa on Instagram, because Lisa has been giving us a ton of love.
Speaker 1:She pops off. Actually, that's so funny because, sorry Lisa, that actually this isn't even coincidences was on my list of things to do today was to DM her on Instagram and thank her for everything. Yes, she is like an auctioneer she does auction stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh, really Isn't that cool. That is really cool. Okay, now we're ready to open the show.
Speaker 1:Yes, we are very ready. Do you have a question for me? Perfect.
Speaker 2:I do. Last week you mentioned that you got your ancestry results.
Speaker 1:Oh, I have yes.
Speaker 2:Okay, did you uncover any murderers?
Speaker 1:No, but hold on. Something just literally fell off the shelf.
Speaker 2:Uh-oh, iceman's coming for you. I don't know what that was, but something just fell off the shelf. Okay, all right. So did it uncover any murderers or any? Mysteries or anything that you know of.
Speaker 1:So sad because I brought. I had bought a kit for Aunt Pat.
Speaker 1:I think I told you that I brought it to her on Sunday, made her spit in that tube, but anyway, that's a whole other thing. But I was when we were talking. I was like I was like I really wanted to find a murderer. When we were talking, I was like I was like I really wanted to find a murderer, Like I'm related to a murderer, Like somebody was murdered, something, something, something. No, I didn't find anything like that. I mean, obviously I still have some research to do and the platform is very weird, but no, Okay so far it's not from there, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, I want you to keep those things in mind about how ancestral DNA can solve things, because a couple weeks ago I promised you guys a case that doesn't end in mystery. You did, I did, okay, okay. Imagine walking the fog-covered streets of London in 1888. Oh, the gas lamps are flickering, the cobblestones are slick with rain and you have the chilling knowledge that a faceless killer is lurking in the shadows Kara Okay. Five women are brutally murdered, their bodies mutilated with surgical precision. The world knew him as Jack the Ripper, yes, for many, many years. However, now, thanks to some modern day science, this is one of the first episodes we can end it with. We have a solved mystery instead of us saying I guess we'll never know.
Speaker 1:I am so ashamed that I did not know this.
Speaker 2:Well, this is why, when I started seeing the news articles come around, I immediately texted and we never text each other about episodes algorithm of anything been.
Speaker 1:how have I not known this?
Speaker 2:I, I don't know my eyes are watering but yeah. So that's why I was like there's big news kind of happening right now now and I can tell you at the end why the algorithm might not be there, because it is solved. It just hasn't been accepted by the right people yet because it's so new. So it's solved beyond certainty. But the Scotland Yard hasn't confirmed.
Speaker 1:I actually might have heard that, so maybe that's why I put it out of my brain, because it's fair. Ok, I'm excited, let's go baby.
Speaker 2:Obviously, you know we can't just get into it being solved. We got to go through the story of Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 1:I love this. I know which is so fucked up.
Speaker 2:That's why we're here. Yeah, come on, be for real, and I know I've been like really true crime heavy this year, so I promise I'll get back to some other weird stuff after this.
Speaker 1:No, I am so happy that you're true crime heavy this year because you've never been true crime heavy, I know, and that's what got us into this that is true.
Speaker 2:I love it all right. So 1888 in the parish of white chapel, london, uh, or in the parish of white chapel, which is in london's east end, is where our story's starting. At this time, england has a huge influx of Irish immigrants and Jewish refugees and a lot of people coming into town, so there's a lot of neighborhoods that were basically set up as poor houses, and Whitechapel is one of them. It becomes insanely overcrowded, leading to 80,000 people being stuffed into this small area. On top of the overcrowding, terrible work conditions, hard to find food. Very sad, no money, no resources. Yeah, no, it's really sad Dude. 55% of kids born there died before five years old.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then, obviously, in places like this, crime, alcoholism, drug use, all that kind of stuff. Okay, we're going to talk about people's houses, but it's important to talk about, or when we're talking about the houses that they are rented, basically nightly, in these poor houses. So you'd have a common area, you'd have a room, and if you didn't pay for it daily, you got kicked out where you could then pay to sleep against a rope stuck between buildings that you leaned on, or literally in the street.
Speaker 1:Which, if you didn't know, that's why it's called a hangover.
Speaker 2:Yes, the hangover rope, which is insane. I actually learned that yesterday while writing this and I was like wait, a hangover, yeah, Okay.
Speaker 1:Because a lot of times you would just like you know, they would spend their money on booze and they wouldn't have enough to actually get a room, so they'd have to hang over be drunk and hung over, which is so wild, but all in all it's not a really great place to be and much of the female population does turn to sex.
Speaker 2:work to, you know, make ends meet.
Speaker 1:Which there's no shame in that there's no shame in that.
Speaker 2:Anyways, though, during the period of like april 3rd 88 to february 13th of 91, there's a large number of murders.
Speaker 2:There's at least 11 female victims, and they were originally just kind of calling them the white chapel murders yes now, at first they thought they were all linked to one person, although six out of the 11 seem like they could have maybe been this Jack the Ripper, but there's not enough evidence to tie in all 11 of them. So, since you know 1888, he is really kind of quote unquote, charged because nobody was ever charged, because nobody was ever charged. But, um, there's the five can, can and not this is a word I can never say canonical deaths that are related to him I wish I could have been the hero to help you.
Speaker 1:That would have been. That would have redeemed myself, if I honestly if it makes you feel better.
Speaker 2:I did have to practice that one on uh google too, and I just canonical. I can never say okay, so anyways. So let's get into the five canonical victims, the infamous victims of jack the ripper. Okay, there were some certain characteristics that do lead investigators to think that it was all done by him. Okay, so they were all sex workers or women living in extreme poverty. They all had similar death inducing injuries, they had all been mutilated in some way or another and they were all killed at night in like super secluded areas. Oh yeah, it's um, it's a little heavy, it is, it's a heavy one, okay.
Speaker 2:So the first victim is 43 year old mold Mary Ann Nichols. So she lives a pretty tough life. Leading up to this, she had been left by her husband who had an affair with a nurse. She kind of resorts to addiction and alcoholism and a life of sex work to get by. So she finds herself living in one of the poor houses in Whitechapel. Um, so she finds herself living in one of the poor houses in Whitechapel and on August 30th at 11 pm she's seen walking down Whitechapel Road. And this is the crazy thing is all of these people have so many eyewitnesses. It's wild.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because there's so many people about it's not right now when it's like late at night the town is just silent.
Speaker 2:It's not like that. Unfortunately, this whole town was a bunch of people who had nowhere to stay and nothing to do other than drink all night. So there was like eyes on all these women. Okay, like you said, that's so crazy, it's just crazy. So she visits a bar and she's seen returning to her home at about 1.20 in the morning, but she's ID'd by the owner and then she can't cough up the money to pay. So she's put back out on the street where she decides she's going to work for the evening to try to pay for a place to sleep. It's just so sad. So she is last seen alive, drunk and stumbling around 2.30 am where she's offered help but she refuses. We don't know what happens to her after 2.30, but around 3.40 am a car man discovers what he initially thinks is a tarp laying on the ground in front of a stable on Buck's Row. He goes to check it out and realizes it's the body of Mary Nichols.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so the police are called to investigate bucks row.
Speaker 2:He goes to check it out and realizes it's the body of mary nichols. Oh yeah, so the police are called to investigate, uh, and they find that her throat is slit from left to right. She has deep and precise cuts across her abdomen with several incisions, but no major organs are removed I don't even have words, though, because it's just so sad.
Speaker 1:It's like there's witnesses she would, somebody who's like yeah, offered her help. Oh my god, could you imagine that being that person that offered help like what could I have actually done to make her she's.
Speaker 2:She's not the only one, oh, you know, uh, and like here's the thing is she was seen at two thirty. She's found an hour later. He moves fucking fast. I think that's one of the things that always shocks me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is shocking, but but then when you think about it, think of all the people that you just said were there. How many people are in the small area? You can move fast because nobody's fucking paying attention to you, because there's so much going on.
Speaker 2:True, true. So they also know, though, that there's not much blood at the scene, which could be one of two things Either she was killed somewhere else or this person had a lot of medical knowledge and was able to control the bleeding. So that's where we start to put the MO together, that whoever this killer is might be medically trained in some way. Yes, our next victim, so that was September 30th or August 30th, the first one, excuse me. So our second victim is Annie Chapman. She is 47 when she passes. She she kind of started young. She grew up in a family where alcohol is very common. She becomes addicted at a young age. Her family, though, at one point does leave the Whitechapel neighborhood, but she stays behind due to having a job as a domestic servant. So she does eventually. Marry has children, but after the death of one of those kids they separate and both parents' alcoholism gets really, really bad. I know she finds another man. He leaves her once her allowance from her first ex-husband stops coming in.
Speaker 1:Allowance.
Speaker 2:Because he actually died. Yeah, and no, it's terribly sad, like her life was tragic. She's pretty much the way it was described, is she's left depressed, with little will to live?
Speaker 1:I don't know if I lived there, if I would have much will to live. No, it does.
Speaker 2:It's just so awful. It's just bleak. Yeah, you're literally working all day to sleep.
Speaker 1:No, truly, you're working to pay for a bed or a rope or a way out.
Speaker 2:So, in a similar manner to our first victim on September 8th, she has refused housing for not being able to pay. She goes out on the streets to work. She leaves her lodge and common area around 1.35 am. She is next seen talking to a man around 5.30 am. This man is described as tall, over 40, dark hair, shabby, with a mustache, wearing a felt hat and a long dark coat Our original images of Jack the Ripper. Just before 6 am, annie Chapman is found dead in the yard entrance of 29 Hanbury Street, found by the elderly resident of the property or the gentleman who owned the property. So she's laying in the doorway. He notifies police right away and again her throat is cut deeply from left to right. Her abdomen is opened, but this time her intestines are pulled out and placed over her right shoulder. Her uterus and part of her bladder are removed again suggesting medical knowledge, and a blood-stained apron is found nearby.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Okay, so now we have two victims that are pretty similarly.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, butchered Surgery, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I think you could say butchered. If it's not you being in a hospital and being because you need medical attention, I think you could say butchered.
Speaker 2:I think that's fair, all right. So we have August 30th, september 8th. Our man wastes no time getting down to his next one, september 30th. So we have August 30th, september 8th, our man wastes no time getting down to his next one, september 30th. So we're like literally within a month now, and on this fine evening he takes not one but two victims, kara. So the first is Elizabeth Stride, 44 at the time of her death. She was actually born in Sweden, moves to London in 1866. Don't really know why, but it sounds like she also had one of those domestic servant jobs lined up. But she kind of told different people different stories and it seemed like a lot of people ended up in Whitechapel if they didn't really want everyone to know the rest of their story.
Speaker 1:I was going to say I think Whitechapel is kind of like. I don't want to say outcast, that's not the right terminology I'm thinking of, but yeah, kind of like I don't want to say outcast, that's not the right terminology I'm thinking of, but yeah, kind of like you don't. You don't want to be questioned because nobody's going to question you. Nobody really gives a crap what you're doing there.
Speaker 2:They're all just focused on their own stuff it's like when you hear that term, like the underbelly of cities, it's kind of like you know I hate to call these people all dark and seedy, but a good chunk of Whitechapel just sounds like it could be magical and beautiful, but it's dark, dreary and disgusting. Well, it was like there's churches nearby that set up all these poor houses. I mean, the meaning behind it was great. It just you know.
Speaker 1:Places like that always happen.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it always happens in places like that, not too different from like Skid Row.
Speaker 1:Exactly that's what I was just trying to think of. What am I doing? Skid Row yeah.
Speaker 2:So, like other, the other woman, though she was married, ends up separated lives in a poor house in Whitechapel. She tells one group of people that her family, like her husband and kids, died on a boat and she survives. We don't really know, but we do know she makes a living through sewing, house cleaning and sex work. On september 30th we know she cleaned a few homes and she heads to a pub around 6 30 pm. Then she was seen um with a few men that evening. One described her as being with a man wearing a felt hat and a long jacket. That seemed to fit the description of our killer and this was around 11 30 pm. So he got an early start this night because her body is discovered around 1 am by a club steward who's heading home on a horse-drawn cart yeah, he didn't waste no time no, no, um, and like the other ones were like you know, way earlier in the morning, he's like, yeah, 11, 30 we're getting out we're good.
Speaker 2:She's found with a single deep throat, cut from left to right, surprise, surprise, uh. In her hands, though, is like breath, mints and a flower. It almost seems like she was like literally like primping, or getting ready to like take them or not take them, because it's a man, eat them, um, but this kind of suggests she was like really caught off guard.
Speaker 1:But she's not the only one caught off guard in this one, though do you think that she was caught off guard or do you think that she was like?
Speaker 2:oh, I think she found her, john. You know she's probably getting ready to like do whatever.
Speaker 2:So you know she's gonna have her little flower and then throat cut. Oh, now rip. Different from the other girls, though women different from the other women is there's a lack of mutilation to her abdomen. That suggests that the killer was probably interrupted during this process and he left to go find another victim, which he does that same night. So our second victim is katherine edawes, I believe that's how you say her last name E-D-D-O-W-E-S. I trust you. So she was 46 when she passed.
Speaker 2:She was born in rural England. Her family moves to London. When she's a baby, she has 11 other siblings, oh, and right after the 11th one, her mom dies of tuberculosis. Not many years later, her father dies as well, leaving all the kids to live in poverty, and she kind of bounced from family members and from job to job. She does have a problem with stealing, though, and keeps losing her job and her housing along the way. So she takes up drinking, she takes up a couple odd jobs um, never keep any long, but she finds herself doing sex work on Dorset Street in a part of Whitechapel known locally as the Shed. Yeah, none of these women. These poor women all had pretty horrendous lives based on just having no other choice, you know.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, and it's that time they're women. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:And I think that's so many of them because divorce wasn't a big thing like so many of these women weren't even divorced, they were just separated from their husband. They like kind of shove them to these. Oh my god, it's so sad yeah, it's awful uh.
Speaker 2:So september 30th, though, she plans to go visit a family member to borrow money, she leaves her friends around 2 pm. At 8 pm she is seen by a police officer, still in white chapel, laying drunk on the pavement. He helps her up. He takes her into custody to help her sober up. She's released at around 12 30 am after being very unpleasant to these officers who were trying to help her oh, but were they actually trying to help her?
Speaker 1:they, I mean, they were just trying to get her.
Speaker 2:Oh, but were they actually trying to help her? They, I mean, they were just trying to get her sobered up. They're like, do you know how to get home? And she'd be like quit back at them with like some sarcastic, mean shit, and then she leaves but takes off in the way opposite of her house. But you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:yeah, police officers weren't that great to women? No, so I'd be.
Speaker 2:I might be sassy as well, well, you're just sassy when you have a few in you anyway. So if you were drunk on the pavement, yeah.
Speaker 1:In Whitechapel. Oh, I'd be real sassy All right.
Speaker 2:So she takes off to go in the wrong direction and she's last seen around 135 by three witnesses. One of those mentioned she's standing with a man in a felt hat, a mustache and a long coat. Imagine that she is seen with her hand on his chest.
Speaker 1:Oh OK, wrong move girlfriend.
Speaker 2:Yeah. About an hour later she's found murdered, laying on her back with her head in a coal hole. Now he must have had a little bit more time, because her throat is not only cut, it is shredded left to right down to her spine. Her face is mutilated, her ears are cut, her cheeks are slashed, her eyelids cut and her nose is severed. Her abdomen he had time. Her abdomen was opened. Her intestines were over her shoulder. Wait.
Speaker 1:I'm so sorry you have to pause. I am not trying to laugh, but you sound like that. Is it like the TikTok sound? Okay, it's like her legs were cut off.
Speaker 2:Her arms were cut off, her eyes were cut out, her tongue was cut off. I, when I was writing this last night, I was like I think that TikTok sound is about Catherine Adowes, like I want to find the source of it because I'm fairly certain it had to be about her.
Speaker 1:I had the same thought I'm not laughing because it's so sad, but the way that you just read it.
Speaker 2:That's all that her arms were cut off. Um, anyways, though, her left kidney and part of her uterus is removed and that is part of the story, not the tic-tac and again, the blood-stained apron is found nearby. Now, this is one, and I remember, so I actually got to do the jack the ripper like tour of all these places where they were found, when I was in london as a kid.
Speaker 1:I'm so jealous. I mean I am, yeah, I know it's disturbing I remember them talking about this.
Speaker 2:So there's anti-semitic graffiti nearby. That was about like the jews were creating all the problems and they always tried to speculate of if that was jack the ripper who left the graffiti right by the body, or if that was just kind of circumstantial.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if I've ever heard that yeah, but the the only thing, the reason why I bring it up is that the cop who investigated her cleaned that graffiti up so that there wouldn't be a race riot. But in doing so, the way, the cleaning and stuff that he used really fucked up the crime scene go figure.
Speaker 2:So we had two, those two september 30th, and then our final. Our last victim, and most brutal yet, is miss mary jane kelly. No, she doesn't quite fit the same moature, the MO. Yes, the stature is different. So she was young, she was only 25, as much as we know, this is one of the few that there's really not many known about her.
Speaker 2:She told different male suitors that she was born in Ireland, then moved to Wales as a child, but she told everybody a different story, sounded like she may have come from a well-to-do family, and that she herself was seemed pretty educated, but she always, like, lied about her age. So they, they do know she wasn't in her 40s, like the other. Their best guess is in her mid-20s, okay, so what we do, though. Know, though, is in 1884 she makes her way to london to work again as a domestic servant, but one of her friends introduces her to brothel work, where she quickly becomes the most popular girl at her local brothel and ends up with a bit of money. Okay, girl, so she was wearing extravagant clothes and this and that. We don't know what happened. But something happens to her and she turns up penniless, living in white chapel, and you know what she does to spend her time.
Speaker 1:Sex work.
Speaker 2:And drinking.
Speaker 1:And drinking.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:She does end up staying with a man named Joseph Barnett and it didn't sound like they were not. He was more than a client but less than a relationship. She still worked, but he was more of like a close friend with benefits is kind of the feeling he was more of like a close friend with benefits.
Speaker 1:It's kind of the he kind of like had a soft spot for her, correct?
Speaker 2:like he just yeah she's staying with him and he last sees her, uh, or sees her leave, on november 8th. So you know, all really close to each other. It seems like he took october off for whatever reason. It's probably his birthday, probably, uh. So she leaves around seven or eight.
Speaker 2:She was with a friend of hers. She went to her house at 13 Miller Court, so she leaves for a while. She's seen drinking around different public houses and she returns back to 13 Miller Court for the night, okay, and she's seen by the friend with a man resembling everything we've told the hat, mustache, scruffy, looking right. So he's seen like walking her home. They're about to part ways. She looks at her friend, mary Jane looks at her friend and says I'm going to invite him in for a song and then they start singing, like actually singing. Okay, obviously we know they're getting up to more Now. Elizabeth Prater, she resides in the room directly above Kelly's, okay, and she'd been woken up by her kitten walking on her. Oh, and here's the faint cry of somebody screaming murder between 3.30 and 4 in the morning.
Speaker 1:It's not a pleasant way to wake up.
Speaker 2:No, sarah Lewis, who is also kind of a neighbor in this, she heard the cry too, but neither of them report anything because it's Whitechapel in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say, but like I was going to be like why not? But then I realized they're both women. It's Whitechapel. Nobody is going to give a shit.
Speaker 2:But her other friend didn't hear any more musical or other noises coming from the room after that same time as well.
Speaker 1:OK.
Speaker 2:Mary Jane Kelly is found the next morning at 10 45 am by police in her residence um, or at least this kind of friend place. She was staying, like I said that they used the term residence, but these people were kind of just staying all over the place, different from the others, though. She's murdered indoors right, possibly because you know, last time he went out he got interrupted once yeah, but and also he was invited in, true, true, so that's the change in his mo.
Speaker 2:Um, he also just being a little more private, he spent some more time and really mutilated her, yeah, so again, the throat is cut down to the spine. Um, the other thing too, and I I don't want to focus too much on it because it is. I mean, these are all horrible anyway, but all the women were assaulted as well. Um, I think that's just, yeah, yeah, go kind of in this situation goes without saying, but her, um, her chest and her abdomen are opened, so not just her abdomen. Many organs are removed with precision and placed around the body, great, but the heart is missing, literally taken by the murderer.
Speaker 2:So after this, however, the, the murders do stop, and mary jane kelly is thought to be the last gruesome act of our boy jack. Okay, so there is an investigation. We're not gonna spend too much time on this, but it's important to know for where we're going with the solving, because these five murders happen really quick and there's these 11 that are happening over years. It gets tons of attention from community and news. People are living in fear of this shadowy figure who's going around murdering women all night and all the other rampant crime in the area. People just feel horribly unsafe.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, because you don't have places to stay right, you can hide, you're literally sleeping on a rope like right, you can't hide yeah so the investigation um is led by detective inspector frederick aberline of the scotland yard and they start to profile the killer. This is when they decide that these five are likely one and the rest of them are somebody else. Um, they kind of profile him based on how he killed when he did it, the similarities in the women, the blood-stained aprons and that medical precision right. So we know he had to have some sort of medical or anatomical knowledge. And over years, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people are interviewed. Nobody's charged. Barnett is one of the first Mary Jane's guy. But while the investigations are going on, let's go back to like the Circleville style. These weird letters start to come in. So I want to I kind of want to read the letters to you.
Speaker 1:Do it.
Speaker 2:Now these are all received by the Central News Agency, except for the last one, ok, and people don't know whether it was a hoax or not, okay, but there is some. So, basically, one person at the agency said he came out and wrote the letters to keep all the heat alive, but there's some details in them that would make it hard like he wouldn't have known okay, right.
Speaker 2:So the first one is called the dear boss letter, and this is dear boss I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won't fix me Like he wouldn't have known. Okay, right, so the first one is called the Dear Boss letter, and this is Dear Boss. I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won't fix me just yet. By the way, 1800s English Not a lot of this is going to make sense the way we would talk. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track.
Speaker 2:That joke about the leather apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shan't quit ripping them until I do get buckled. Grand work, the last job was Remember, so this letter came in September 27th after the duel. I gave that lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now? I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over to the last job to write with, but it went on thick like glue and I can't use it.
Speaker 2:It's very boastful Some people say that that graffiti was done in blood. Red ink is fit enough. I hope the red blood was tested and it was ink. The next job I do, I shall clip the lady's ears off and send the police officers. Just for jolly, wouldn't you Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work and then give it out straight? My knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck, yours truly signed Jack the Ripper PS. Don't mind me giving the trade name, so he names himself. And then there's a PP or PSS. Wasn't good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands. Curse it, no luck. Yet they say I'm a doctor now. Ha ha ha, cocky, are we? Yeah?
Speaker 1:Well, I guess you'd have to be right and like so.
Speaker 2:Some people thought it was hoax. But like he knew, the red ink on the graffiti. And then the next murder that happens, the ears are clipped. So the next one is much shorter. We call this the saucy jackie letter I was now.
Speaker 1:I'm so sorry that that letter you just read came before the murder of the clipped ears so yeah, I, I misspoke when I was reading it.
Speaker 2:So this one had or came in september 27th, so this is after um. Our first one was august 8th. Our second one or no, our first one was august 30th. Our second was september 8th. The duel with the ear being cut off that happened september 30th. The letter was on september 27th okay.
Speaker 1:So yeah, how would you have wrote that? Because you wouldn't have known, right okay.
Speaker 2:so the second letter, the saucy jack, this one's October 1st, so during his month off.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So between four and five. I was not cutting, dear old boss, when I gave you the tip. You'll hear about saucy Jackie's work tomorrow. Double event. This time Number one squealed a bit, couldn't finish off straight, had no time to get ears off for the police. Thanks for keeping this last letter until I got back to work. So this one comes in October 1st. The double murder happened September 30th. So he mailed this. Yeah, he had to have mailed it right when he finished. If he's talking about the squealing, Saucy Jackie.
Speaker 2:He is a saucy guy. Okay, I'm sorry, but I like.
Speaker 1:Saucy Jackie no, I don't like him, but I like the name jackie. No, I don't like him, but I like the name saucy jackie. That's hilarious. Now, is it with a y or an ie?
Speaker 2:why, oh god, yeah that makes sense a wife, then okay, yeah, jackie boy so our last letter, this one goes to george lusk. He is the chairman of the white chapel vigilance committee. This is called the from hell letter. Let's read from hell. Mr lusk, sore, I send you half the kidney I took from one woman, preserved it for you. The other piece I fried and ate. It was very nice. I may send you the bloody knife that took it out. If you only write or wait a while longer, sign, catch me, if you can. If you Can, mr Lusk, it was sent in a box with a portion of the kidney, which kind of makes it harder to believe that these letters are hoaxes when he's literally sending Now. Unfortunately there wasn't forensics then and the kidney does disappear over time, so we don't know if it belongs to one of the victims or not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, hundreds of suspects over time, right, including men who are close to the women, men who are not even close to the situation at all. No one is ever charged, though. Um right, there's a lot of notable suspects. So one we talked about before, hh holmes, right, um, but we found out the travel records. Things just didn't line up yeah, it doesn't make sense sir william gall. He was a royal physician tied to this royal conspiracy theory, which claimed that the murders were part of a cover-up to protect prince albert victor from a scandal I'm sure we could figure out the scandal.
Speaker 2:He was sleeping with prostitutes, right, yep, yep. But this guy couldn't have done it because he was elderly and had a series of strokes around the time. Another famous one is this montague john drew it that people said a lot, um, because he is questioned, he commits suicide after and a lot of his family was trying to be like he's definitely seems like he could be it, because they all kept saying he was sexually insane.
Speaker 2:Well, it kind of turns out he was probably just gay yeah, and labeled as sexually insane and then, when he started to be pinned for these, he does kill himself. But it could not have been him. Francis Trumbly, he was another big one. He was a quack doctor from America who scammed people with fake medicine. He is also arrested in London in 1888 for unrelated crimes, but he had a deep, deep hatred for women and prostitutes and flees back to the United States right about the time the murders stop.
Speaker 2:Ok, so he was a strong one circumstantially, but there's no evidence that ever linked him to it. Ok, so those are like some of like the famous names that got brought up. Like I said, there's, there's, so, so many. But there was a lack of any sort of forensic science and that a number, or like the abrupt stop to the murders stopped giving them anything to go off of right, and I think the cops kind of thought like hey, we're gonna be able to like, because they couldn't do forensic. They were gonna try to set up stings and this and that and patrol at night, but it stopped, which is so weird however, oh go on, no, no, we're gonna say I'm gonna go on to start solving it.
Speaker 1:So if you have comments now, oh no I was just gonna say like so how many? I'm sorry, how many was that?
Speaker 2:there's like four or five uh victims. Oh five victims, it's five okay canonical five yeah, connect.
Speaker 1:Okay, I was thinking six for some reason, okay, no, but it's like okay. Canonical five, yeah, connect. Okay. I was thinking six for some reason, okay, no, but it's like okay, five victims is a lot in one area. So august to november yeah right, so he just, he probably moved away, he went somewhere else he did go somewhere else, right like that's what it is, like it just doesn't. It didn just stop. It stopped because he's not stupid, he left.
Speaker 2:So there's another suspect that's been a main suspect for a very long time. His name is Aaron Kosminski and he is a Polish barber. Ok, so he came to the UK from Poland in the late 1880s and he, like I said, he was an original suspect because he worked as a barber near all the murder sites. He was also known to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia and suffered auditory hallucinations and had violent tendencies. Cute, while the investigations were going on, a key witness does place him at one of the scenes in 18. The key witness gives his testimony testimony or not testimony comes forward and says that he saw aaron with one of the victims okay, but he says this in 1894, so years later. But he refuses to actually testify. Okay, so aaron, who had a long history of violent outbursts, was sent to a mental institution right when the murders stop, which would explain why and he stayed in the institution until he died in his 50s. So there was never enough evidence to pin the murder on him, right? Okay, until the saga that starts in 2007.
Speaker 1:That's when I graduated.
Speaker 2:You're so young. Thanks For the first time compared to these people. Okay, so a blood-stained shawl that was claimed to have been found near the body of katherine adawis is. She was the first. Um, she's the one with the ears.
Speaker 2:She is number four, okay, four so the shawl had been kind of lost for a while because people knew there had been blood on it. But yeah, the evidence was just okay. They they couldn't find it right. They didn't know who owned it shows up at this auction and this researcher who'd been looking into the case for a long time can you imagine that's on an auction? Oh, I know crazy russell edwards buys it okay okay so 2007?
Speaker 2:obviously, forensics are a little bit different than they are now. We didn't't have that whole ancestry, all that kind of stuff, right? So while, yes, you could test blood, the familial, generational, historical DNA was not as prevalent. So he does analyze it. They find that there's a couple of different blood types on there. You know some that matches Catherine, but there's also some semen and some other blood. So the dna was compared to living relatives of many of subjects, right? Or suspects, including the kosminski's, okay. And in 2019, they finally were able to test the mitochondrial DNA and find a match with one of the Kaminsky Kazminski family members OK. So the blood on the shawl found at the murder scene?
Speaker 1:This is my dream.
Speaker 2:And the semen, the DNA matches to a living Kazminski. Oh, my dream. That's why you did start to hear about him back again in 2019.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And since then, a multitude of tests has been done to identify and certify the DNA. They've certified the shawl, they've done DNA on other victims, family members and suspects. So now they have not only the suspect matching, they have the victim 100 matching. So they do know it is katherine and dowis's blood. So now you have kind of, yeah, this validation on both sides right. So it did seem to be solved, right. So around 2019. Edward says it's a voyage of discovery with many twists and turns. This adventure has been chilling from the beginning to the end and I'm lucky to experience it. Okay, this has been around now for what it's? 2025, about six years. But it was in February of this year that Edward and the family of the victims finally have enough of this evidence where they've ruled out so many other people. They've ruled in Kosminski and done all this DNA testing on the suspects and the victims to where now they can say with 100% certainty they are sure it had to be Aaron, it's not. This just came out February 25th, okay.
Speaker 1:This is wild.
Speaker 2:Now, the reason all these articles have come out is because Edwards and the families are now working with a legal team to officially request that the attorney general and the Scotland Yard name Aaron Kosminski as the killer. Though, is because back in 2019, edwards made a very similar request and then Attorney General Sir Michael Ellis denied it, saying there was not sufficient evidence, which is why, for the past six years, they have gathered every bit of evidence to rule out and validate theirs. So we've known it for a while. I mean, russell has basically known this since 2007. They're just trying to get it confirmed. Yeah, like a hundred percent confirmed, right? So like for now officials to come out and say which will probably happen, hopefully this year next that jack the Jack the Ripper was 100% Aaron Kosminski, which is fucking wild.
Speaker 1:But it makes sense.
Speaker 2:Right, I do have two fun facts to leave you with here. One is a quote from Karen Miller, the great, great, great granddaughter of Catherine Dallas. Oh, and she said having the killer's name in official records would bring justice to victims who were not able to get justice so, so long ago.
Speaker 1:Oh, I have goosebumps.
Speaker 2:Now I told you about a thing I did Monday. So this past Monday I went out and I made a new friend of somebody from a local paranormal investigating group that I want to start getting involved with I know you're going to start coming when you can, yeah, and she had been listening to the podcast and she said that we did a really good job with HH Holmes. She liked our angle on it, which was nice to hear. Then she said something about like you know, I like that. You brought up that a lot of people thought he was Jack, but that it couldn't have been. Do you hear they found him? I'm like, yes, that right now. That's hilarious.
Speaker 2:I said there's just one thing that doesn't sit right with me, because we started to discuss it and she goes. Well, what's that? I said well, everything said he had to be medically trained. Yeah, because how was he doing this?
Speaker 1:Right, like the precision and the cuts and everything, and he was a barber.
Speaker 2:And she said many medical doctors in the 1800s weren't trained to open bodies as that was unpure medical practice Cause, remember, a lot of doctors were just like their bags and their selves and door to door they weren't doing full surgeries.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So this would explain why the Polish barber would have had anatomy knowledge. Because barbers were given the or taught the skills on how to use blades in the way that doctors wouldn't want to do. That were unpure. So things like simple surgeries, bloodletting, removal of things on your skin and simple medical procedures were done by barbers. They were medically trained.
Speaker 1:That's crazy.
Speaker 2:Right, so thank you, dawn. I appreciate you for that.
Speaker 1:Holy crap.
Speaker 2:And I'm also sorry, dawn, because I did have to fact check you and Google did confirm and says historically, particularly in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, barbers were known as barber surgeons and they performed medical procedures like minor surgeries, dental extractions and others alongside their traditional duties. So even more evidence like that was the part that wasn't sitting well with me.
Speaker 1:Wow, I'm surprised that wasn't brought up in any of your research.
Speaker 2:I know Well that. So the research, my articles that I use were very different. There was a bunch of like what happened and then I found a bunch of them just explaining how they linked Aaron to it. So I could see that Aaron was one of the original, but yeah, somehow that no, but I'm just surprised that, like that correlation didn't get brought up.
Speaker 1:Well, that's why.
Speaker 2:Because Aaron was always a suspect. But they're always like, well, he was just like a crazy barber in the area, like people weren't, I think they were trying to tie the more famous people to the case, so that a lot of that research didn't focus on the fact that barbers would have been trained incredible. Oh, I want to solve a murder this has to be like one of the first times in two and a half years of doing this where we can sit here at the end and go we know we know what happened.
Speaker 1:This one's solved ancestry. Sponsor us right, um.
Speaker 2:So now I also have another admission to make. Is I always give you shit when you don't have a question for me? And as we're like starting to do this, I pull up the script and you know we're doing our opening and I realized that on my script the question area is blank and I am so glad I remember that moment last week where you brought up the ancestry.
Speaker 1:I was going to call you out because I was going to ask you if I didn't have my results back yet, how was that question going to go? So I was actually already going to call you out.
Speaker 2:We record the weekly episodes back to back. So she only told me about that about an hour before we started recording. So it teed it up perfectly and I pulled that out of my ass.
Speaker 1:I know it was just like me. Um, wow, uh. Good job, dude. Thank you. Anytime you can talk about jack the ripper, I love that.
Speaker 2:I know it's horrific and you did a very good job of like holding back the horror yeah, but because even just the way the bodies were and, uh, how they were treated, the it is probably one of the darkest tales of all time.
Speaker 1:It's awful, awful, yeah, but good job.
Speaker 2:That was crazy but yeah, now we know, and isn't it like kind of I don't know? I was kind of bummed that I ended up being a polish person.
Speaker 1:Oh, my gosh, shut the hell up.
Speaker 2:Who cares, as as it's solved and it's like one of those things where it's we're going to have to keep our eye on it for when it's like official official.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we'll have to post back, post back, report back. I have to pee so bad, the pee is hurting my brain. But great job, that was great.
Speaker 2:Thank you, and I'm impressed that we did that in under an hour, because that could have easily been a three, four parter but we're at 59 minutes, they'll be all right.
Speaker 1:All right, that was great thank you, thank you, um.
Speaker 2:So I guess, for this one, what kind of emoji is there?
Speaker 1:a little church emoji for like white chapel yeah, we'll do that do a church in a knife chart, or there might be a barber um oh, like a straight razor yeah, thank you church and a straight razor.
Speaker 2:Oh dark oh, yeah, for real well I mean fitting um, all right, what? What do these little oddballs need to do before we close up the shop for the day?
Speaker 1:the only thing that these little oddballs need to do is to creep a real. You little oddballs.
Speaker 2:Goodbye, bye, maybe see you in two days. Ah, bye, thank you, I'm out.
