"Kosminski Done It" Topic

"Final solutions" crop up every couple years. Will this one be the last?

Descendants of Jack the Ripper's victims want new inquest
link

Again? Well, okay. But DNA on a shawl of a London streetwalker from 1888 is gonna be hard to call "definitive" at this stage. Even if it is the Polish butcher, there could be other reasons for his DNA to be on the shawl, from the mundane— he sold some meat to her, she dropped the shawl, he picked it up and gave it back— to the immoral— he was her last "friend" before being killed by someone else. Or, given the lack of frequency of cleaning of Victorian outer clothing (and for that matter, even modern frequency for exterior drapery like a shawl, which is rarely washed after wearing), the DNA could have been from a much earlier encounter than the day of the murder.

Oh, well. Gives me a reason to go listen to this again: YouTube link

Parzival makes some good points. I think that there would be a better case if we had Kosminski's DNA associated with some or ideally all of the other victims. Even so, he may have been an innocent customer, or they may have been his customers.