Subject: Jack the Ripper Identified?
Posted by: daver852
Date: Sep 08 14
Saw this article this morning and found it very interesting.
Posted by: daver852
Date: Sep 08 14
Saw this article this morning and found it very interesting.
19 replies. On page 1 of 1 pages. 1
daver852 
|
Link to article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2746321/Jack-Ripper-unmasked-How-amateur-sleuth-used-DNA-breakthrough-identify-Britains-notorious-criminal-126-years-string-terrible-murders.html?ns_camp Reply #1. Sep 08 14, 7:46 AM |
Mixamatosis
|
I remember reading about that and thinking it seems the mystery has been solved at last - at least it's probably as much evidence as we'll ever have now. Reply #2. Jul 21 15, 10:33 AM |
JonPunk
|
I believe of late - two people ( one Patricia Cornwell , author ) - have virtually foolproof evidence of who Jack the Ripper was . Funnily it seems that both have different people . What is always overlooked it seems to me - if the person responsible wasn't a suspect back in 1888 , then no one is going to pick up on that now - they only look at suspects . IF he was unknown then - he's unknown forever . Reply #3. Apr 01 17, 12:37 AM |
jabb5076
|
Read the Cornwell book and I believe you'll change your mind about "foolproof" evidence. The book is, essentially, a load of claptrap. She completely ignores evidence that points away from Walter Sickert (including a time he was in another country when one of the murders occurred), cherry picks information that looks bad and ignores the opposite, and makes wild, psychological assumptions about Sickert's mind with virtually no evidence and then uses her assumptions as "proof." I thought the book an utter waste of time and a fair number of reviewers agree. Reply #4. Apr 01 17, 6:02 AM |
shipyardbernie
|
I have followed this case for decades and had narrowed it down to about three suspects. Now I will have to think again but I have never believed that the five murders credited to "Jack The Ripper" were committed by him. Reply #5. May 27 17, 7:39 PM |
MiraJane
|
The article listed in the first post doesn't prove the identity of Jack the Ripper at all. Biological evidence was found on a shawl belonging to the last victim. Some of that evidence was blood from the victim. Okay, that makes sense. More than one blood type was found. Unfortunately, the other blood type was too degraded to make a match with any of the Ripper suspects. Semen stains were also found. Since the woman was a prostitute, this shouldn't be surprising. One of the Ripper suspects was matched to a semen stain. Since this suspect lived and worked in the area, it doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to consider the fact that he may have been her customer and not her killer. All this evidence "proves" is that the suspect named had real close personal contact with that shawl. Nothing else. There is also a link to a story about how it took nine months for the semen stain's genetic profile to be matched to anyone. Daver, I'm surprised you quietly accepted that time frame. Over in the thread you started about the skeleton of Richard III being found you pitched a fit when the results of genetic testing on those bones hadn't been made public after three months. A skeleton that has been buried for hundreds of years is much more difficult to extract viable DNA from than a shawl from the Victorian era with visible stains on it. Even though you never reported on it, the results on the Richard III skeleton were published a year after the discovery. Reply #6. May 27 17, 9:09 PM |
Creedy
|
What did the results on the Richard III skeleton reveal? Was it really him? Poor old Richard (1452-1485). I always feel sorry for him. The victors in any "war" write the history books. Henry VII etc sure weren't going to say anything nice about Richard III. Nor was Shakespeare, who wrote his famous play on the subject circa 1592. In fact, I think he made Richard so impossibly villainous in the play that he was a secret sympathiser. Reply #7. Sep 16 17, 8:10 PM |
| Creedy
|
Here's a forensic facial reconstruction of the body found under the car park: http://tinyurl.com/yd5z2zk3 Reply #8. Sep 16 17, 8:57 PM |
| Creedy
|
Oh wow, I've found a GREAT site on forensic facial reconstructions of some figures from history. It's amazing just to see what they probably looked like! might start a new thread. Reply #9. Sep 16 17, 9:08 PM |
| daver852
|
"What did the results on the Richard III skeleton reveal? Was it really him?" Well, maybe. Perhaps even probably. But not certainly. The University of Leicester insists that they have identified the skeleton as being King Richard's beyond any reasonable doubt. There is evidence that the man had sustained severe injuries from edged weapons that almost certainly led to his death. He had a severe curvature of the spine, which fits with contemporary accounts. The man was likely of upper class origin, because he was well-nourished and had eaten a diet rich in protein. And a DNA comparison showed that the skeleton's mitochondrial DNA was an almost exact match with that of two descendants of Richard's maternal line. However - and there's always a however - there were a few problems that had to be explained away. The first two Carbon-14 dating tests on the bones showed them to be too old to be Richard's. This discrepancy was explained away by saying that he had eaten a lot of fish, which can skew Carbon-14 dating tests. This is true, but how they determined that Richard was fond of fish is a mystery. More extensive DNA analysis showed that the man had blue eyes and blond hair, which does not fit contemporary descriptions of Richard. Richard is known to have fought in many battles prior to Bosworth, but the bones showed no healed wounds. Finally, testing of male line descendants showed no match with the skeleton's DNA at all, which means that somewhere in Richard's family tree one of his female ancestors must have borne a child who was not fathered by her husband. Or that the bones aren't Richard's after all. It is difficult for me to come to any conclusion on the matter. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that suggests the bones are Richard's, but it's not quite the open-and-shut case that most journalists have reported. It is sort of like the stories that say DNA testing "proved" that Thomas Jefferson was the father of his slave, Sally Hemings', children. No, it did not. What it proved is that some male Jefferson fathered some of her children. There were a lot of other male Jeffersons living near Mount Vernon. One alternate candidate for the father of Hemings' children is Thomas Jefferson's brother, Randolph, who was described as rather simple-minded, and who enjoyed spending time among the plantation's slave population. So is it really Richard III in the fancy tomb in Leicester Cathedral? Who knows? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/11484859/Richard-III-Were-burying-the-wrong-body.html Reply #10. Sep 16 17, 10:11 PM |
| Creedy
|
Fascinating - and thank you. It seems they WANT it to be Richard, so go out of their way to try to justify their findings. If the skeleton was too old to be his, that's a pretty big maybe. Fish, schmish. I don't know about DNA to say anything with certainty, but isn't the father's DNA going back or down through the ages the one they use to prove relationship? I saw a program on telly a year or so ago on the science channel where they were trying to trace the origins of the human race. For the purpose of the show, the common ancestor they referred to (probably tongue-in-cheek I imagine, being scientists and all) they named Adam. The world’s leading geneticist has been working for years trying to find this sole ancestor. He's traced the ancestry of millions and millions alive today - by taking samples all over the world, in thousands of groups of men - and feeding them all into a massive computer that then links backwards further and further. Examples: Most males in Mongolia all link back to the one ancestor in that land. Genghis Khan. He had hundreds of wives, thousands of children apparently (Lord luv a duck, he must have been at it non-stop). That line however didn't stop there - the Genghis Khan was merely another branch leading backwards to other thicker branches. Another example: The geneticist and his team and his computer have also worked backwards from the descendants today of Thomas Jefferson - but probably his brother. Going backwards through his descendants, they’ve traced the Jefferson ancestry way back to England and Europe and from there, to Lebanon and the Middle East. Once again it didn't stop there though, but linked back again to a thicker branch. Further examples followed from all over the world with thousands of different groups of people - all linking back further and further to thicker and thicker branches, but at the same time with the branches growing fewer and fewer as they melded. Until at last they could go no further. They had reached the trunk. (Whether this is scientific fact or not I didn't care. My eyeballs were popping out of my head) This was to a tribe of people living way up in NE Africa today, whose lifestyle has continued, unchanging, for thousands of years. The so-called sole ancestor, "Adam", lived in that tribe. After years and years of work, the geneticist has found that every single man on the planet today - no matter where they live, or what colour or race they may be - can be linked back to that one person - whom they called "Adam". They even had a world renowned forensic specialist, given what evidence they had, reproduce a three dimensional image of this scientific Adam. He was interesting, that forensic specialist. He mostly relies on scientific method, but says he also uses intuition in his reproductions. I'm not sure if intuition should be factored into scientific evaluations, but whatever, I didn't make the program. The image that specialist came up with was that of a olive to darker skinned man, noble looking, with straight, intelligent glance, a fine nose, largish lips, and a forehead already developing into that of mankind's today. I quite fancied him. He looked a little like that yummy Denzel Washington. It said this scientific Adam of course had other men about him in the tribe, but their DNA simply failed to reproduce surviving males that continued down to today. It fizzled out. The reason it was done through the male DNA line was because the male line is passed, basically unchanging, from father to son through time. The varieties on it come in from the female line. What the geneticist was eliminating was the discrepancies that came in from time to time, and by working backwards, looking for that one common genetic link on all male lines. What made this particular ancestor so successful, the geneticist next asked? It was language. According to this program, that one human spontaneously developed the ability to think as we think today - and to produce a very basic form of early language. It's impossible for anyone to argue which of the two - language or thinking - came first. There can't be a first. They had to develop concurrently. We think in images AND in words. Science says this was not always so though, it was just images once. Thinking in words, ie language, commenced approx 60,000 years ago, and with the one human only, in a form of spontaneous mutation. Or MAYBE this happened on the 6th day of creation (they didn't say that - I just threw it in for effect) At the same time, they say, this was when mankind began to use modern tools (as we conceive them to be, not just hunks of rocks or sticks etc) and to paint pictures on the walls of caves. I was entranced, both scientifically and religiously, and immensely entertained at the same time. So, what about all those other fossils and skulls and that poor old Lucy from thousands of years prior to scientific Adam? Science says flatly there is no genetic link whatsoever to mankind today. Prior to their scientific Adam, no link can be found. How did this miracle/scientific discovery come about? Science of course says spontaneous mutation. The faithful say God. Are these mutually exclusive? Or are they the same? Perhaps the concept of Adam and Eve is not simply two single people, but instead thousands of Adams and thousands of Eves. Perhaps Adam means the Y gene and Eve means the XY gene. I was left with one puzzling question though. If this scientific Adam was living in a tribe of people, and his were the only genes that made it through to everyone else on earth – who was his father? Reply #11. Sep 22 17, 8:17 PM |
| daver852
|
Well, if all human beings are descended from a relatively small group of individuals who evolved in Africa, and then spread out to Europe and Asia, logic would dictate that if one goes back far enough, there would be a single common male ancestor of all living human beings, and the there would also be a single common female ancestor. On the other hand, if humans evolved independently in different parts of the world, one would see multiple lineages. Most scientists believe that humans interbred to some extent with Neanderthals; perhaps there is a rare Neanderthal male or female line that has not yet been discovered. Reply #12. Sep 22 17, 8:52 PM |
brm50diboll
|
First, XY is male. XX is female. Second, while the Y chromosome (chromosome, not gene) is used to trace paternal kinship, the X chromosome is not used to trace maternal kinship since all humans, males and females, must have an X chromosome. Maternal kinship is determined by the study of mitochondrial DNA. All mitochondria in the zygote (fertilized egg) and thus in the offspring come from the egg (ovum, from the mother) and *none* from the sperm. The sperm does have mitochondria, but sperm mitochondria is found in the tailpiece and does not enter the egg during fertilization. Consequently, mitochondrial inheritance is *exclusively* maternal. This fact is used to trace maternal kinship. Current DNA studies point to a "mitochondrial Eve" who lived in Africa about 80,000 years ago as the maternal ancestor of all currently living humans. Third, while I respect religious beliefs, mixing science and religion has the effect of corrupting both. Science does not claim ultimate truth. The current paradigm can always potentially be replaced at some point in the future, but only by compelling scientific evidence following the scientific method. Any system of thought which claims ultimate truth and denies the possibility of being proved wrong is not science. Rant concluded. Reply #13. Sep 22 17, 10:07 PM |
| Creedy
|
Oh it's so hot in Africa. No wonder they hightailed it outa there. It was an engrossing show all the same. I was glued to the set. Interesting point, Daver - another Neanderthal line not yet found. Oh - what was that?? Did anyone hear that? It sounded like a scientific big bang. Reply #14. Sep 23 17, 4:00 AM |
lesn
|
DNA that old cannot be relied on surely? Plus the blood could have got there anytime. There have been so many theories about who Jack was and conflicting ideas about whether he committed all the murders. Reply #15. Jan 03 19, 5:55 AM |
THartmann9374
|
I always wondered who Jack the Ripper was. Reply #16. Sep 22 19, 12:16 AM |
Cymruambyth
|
I'm afraid that anything published by the Daily Mail is suspect, in my opinion. That paper is the British version of Canada's 'Sun' tabloids and the U.S. National Enquirer. Reply #17. Sep 28 19, 12:24 PM |
C30
|
Compared to "popular tabloids" such as Daily Mail, Daily Star, Daily Mirror............the Daily Mail is a paragon of journalistic accuracy IMO. Reply #18. Sep 28 19, 2:27 PM |
| shipyardbernie
|
Getting back to the subject "Jack The Ripper", It has yet to be proved to me (and I have been reading about and watching documentaries on him since the '60s), that he actually killed the five women attributed to him. As far as I know, no one has investigated if there had been another series of murders in London before the ones that he is accused of, or if there had been any similar murders in any other city in England or the rest of Europe before, during, or after the Whitechapel murders. If there was, had anyone been arrested in connection with them. Reply #19. May 06 20, 2:39 PM |
19 replies. On page 1 of 1 pages. 1
Legal / Conditions of Use
|
|
: