Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888 (32 page)

At this stage I did not even realize that I could get DNA from a descendant of a relative of Kosminski’s: I thought it had to come directly from him, because he had no children and
therefore no direct descendants. The only option, I thought, was to get it from his remains. I knew where he was buried and so I looked into what would need to be done, and whether there would be
anything left of him from which to extract a sample. Yes, I was told: at the very least, his teeth would be in his grave, and would be a good source of DNA. To proceed I needed to get permission to
exhume his body and I spent much of December 2012 trying to do it.

I approached the United Synagogue, which is responsible for the upkeep of eleven Jewish cemeteries, including East Ham Cemetery where the remains of Aaron Kosminski lie. As I knew from my
research that it was the United Synagogue who had arranged his burial in March 1919, I contacted Melvyn Hartog, their Head of Burials. Again, I was aware that I was dealing with an extremely
delicate situation and in approaching Melvyn I made sure that I did not come across as some morbid ‘geek’ or – worse – a potential violator of the grave, and that my
intentions were clear and scientific.

Melvyn was very interested in what I had to say and knew a great deal about the Jack the Ripper story: after all, having the body of a major Ripper suspect under your immediate
authority is bound to spike curiosity. He told me to send my proposal in writing, with a full explanation of how I had been working on the shawl and its significance to the case.
Melvyn then passed the matter over to his superiors for consideration.

While I was waiting for the reply I began looking into exhumation companies, so that everything would be ready to go if I got permission. I found one company whose headquarters were based along
a stretch of road that I had often driven along in the past twenty years because the scenery is so beautiful. The fact that this exhumation company was there, in a place I loved, made me feel as if
fate was on my side, as if it was meant to be. Simon Bray, the owner of the company, advised me on how I should approach the situation. It came with a caveat: he warned me that the Jewish community
would not take the idea of an exhumation lightly, owing to the religious strictures concerning burials. I had not really thought about any fundamental opposition to an exhumation on purely
religious grounds.

Whilst waiting for the reply from Melvyn Hartog, Simon Bray made some suggestions: if the United Synagogue said no to a full exhumation, then we could go down the DNA extraction route. This
means that the grave would be opened up, and as Kosminski was buried in a coffin nearly a hundred years ago, his coffin would have long decayed, leaving the body exposed. There would be no need to
move the body to take a few teeth from the skull. DNA samples could be extracted from the pulp in those teeth and then they could be replaced. The body could be covered over and that would be the
end of it. But there would only be one shot at this and as all the activity would have to take place at the graveside, it would require the forensic team, protective tent and all the paraphernalia
needed to preserve the scene and acquire the samples with no contamination.

If the United Synagogue refused this idea, then the only other option would be to apply for a Ministry of Justice Licence to get legal permission to exhume the body. If this application was
successful it would automatically bypass any refusal from the synagogue elders and they would have no choice but to cooperate. There was one problem: to apply for the Ministry of Justice Licence
required the signature of a living relative of the deceased.

Just before Christmas 2012, the decision came through and, as I feared, the directors of the United Synagogue gave a resounding ‘no’. I completely understand their decision: it would
be a breach of their burial laws, which forbid the removal of corpses from a grave. They also vetoed the idea of uncovering the body to extract DNA samples from the teeth.

I now faced getting the Ministry of Justice Licence plan up and running. I needed a descendant and I needed their signature. Contacting the families of the Ripper victims seemed complicated and
fraught with enough problems: it would be even more sensitive to approach the descendants of Aaron Kosminski. I anticipated that these people would be more reluctant to help than relatives of
innocent victims.

I wondered if Alan McCormack at the Black Museum could help me with details of the Kosminski family, but when I rang the museum I discovered he had retired. His successor, Paul Bickley, agreed
to look for any information the museum might have about the Kosminski family tree.

While mulling it over with Jari he told me something vital: if we could get a sample of DNA from a descendant of Kosminski’s sisters, it would be enough to match with
the DNA from the shawl. In other words, I needed to find a descendant in order to apply for exhumation, but if I could find a descendant down the female line her mitochondrial DNA
would be enough to make the match, without digging up the body. Aaron Kosminski had the same mtDNA as all his siblings, and his sisters would have passed it on to their children, and it would have
survived down the female line. I knew it would be hard to find, but it seemed a lot easier than applying for a licence to overrule the United Synagogue, which I instinctively did not want to do. I
really did not want to transgress the burial rules of their religion.

So I began a different kind of digging. I subscribed to numerous genealogy websites and began work in earnest, focusing specifically on Aaron Kosminski’s sister, Matilda, who had the
rather distinctive surname of Lubnowski, and sometimes used Lubnowski-Cohen. After what seemed like an eternity of dead ends, I found a link. The information came from the genealogical research of
one of Matilda’s many descendants and it proved invaluable. Suddenly, my efforts at establishing a decent family tree were bearing fruit rapidly. I managed to find a marriage certificate for
one of Matilda’s daughters, which took me on a trail which, by coincidence, led me to Hove, East Sussex, only a few minutes’ walk from the Police Convalescent Seaside Home.

I hoped this descendant would be able and willing to help, but I managed my expectations because I knew what a difficult thing I was asking for. Several attempts to make telephone contact failed
when the calls went on to an answering machine, so I prepared a handwritten note and delivered it in person, knocking at the door on the off chance I would get a reply. There was no answer, so I
pushed the letter through the letter
box. There was no response to the letter either and I knew that, once again, I had hit a dead end. If this person already knew they were
related to Aaron Kosminski, then they clearly did not want to be drawn into an association with the Ripper story. It was very frustrating: my best lead yet to find a female descendant, and my best
chance of having this exhumation order signed if I had to go down that route, had come to nothing. In the meantime, Simon Bray from the exhumation company was calling, fired up to begin work and
looking for good news: there was none to give him.

When I went on a family holiday to Egypt I took with me a book,
Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard’s Prime Suspect
, written by Robert House, an
American writer who has long been fascinated by the Ripper case. The book argued the case for Kosminski as the Ripper and brought together much of what we know about his background and life, plus
more that Robert House had painstakingly researched. It was an extremely thorough and responsible study, charting the history of Jewish settlement in London and the dangerous anti-Semitism in
Eastern Europe at the time that led to so many Jews feeling compelled to leave their homeland. The book put the fate of the Kosminski family and therefore Aaron himself into context.

I went through the book, looking for any nuggets of information that might generate new leads in my search for a living descendant – after all, this was the first serious study dedicated
solely to Kosminski, and House’s research was impeccable and had unearthed much new material. In the end I could find very little information regarding the descendants of the Kosminski family
that I had not already found out for
myself. But when I read the acknowledgements I saw that the author wrote: ‘my deepest thanks to the descendants of Woolf Abrahams,
Isaac Abrahams and Matilda and Morris Lubnowski-Cohen.’ Clearly the author had tracked down these people: it gave me renewed hope that I would be able to do the same.

I had a family tree, I even had names – and now with the help of a number of professional genealogists, I eventually had contact details for descendants who might be prepared to help me.
There were some relatives in America, descended from Aaron’s older sister Helena (Annie) Singer, and I was prepared to follow up this lead – perhaps, being American, the crimes would
seem more distant and they’d be more willing to get involved – but first I had a few more British options to explore. I started with another female descendant of Matilda. I had no idea
how receptive she would be to my call.

The first couple of phone calls I made went straight to voicemail, and I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach: was this going to be a repeat of my Hove experience? But the third time
I got through, and explained who I was, and what I needed. As the conversation progressed, I felt she understood that I was not simply expounding a wild theory. She knew she was a descendant of the
Kosminski family: it was apparently common knowledge in her family.

I arranged to meet her in the East End of London – it seemed appropriate. I am not naming her here, nor giving any personal information about her, because she does not want to be exposed
to the cranks and weirdos who attach themselves to anybody whose name becomes public property today, through social media. I have promised to protect her identity, and I always will, so I am going
to refer to her simply as M (and, no, that’s not one of her real initials).

I was very nervous as I approached her, but I was as lucky with M as I was with Karen, Catherine Eddowes’ descendant. I could not have hoped for two friendlier,
kinder women. It is, understandably, much tougher for M. Although she knew she was descended from the sister of
one
of the suspects, I was now telling her that I wanted her help to prove
he was
the
suspect.

She courteously and politely took me through all the arguments against her ancestor being the Ripper, as if, subconsciously perhaps, she wanted to prove it was not him. I was familiar with all
the arguments, and able to refute them, but I understood why she wanted to make certain that I knew what I was talking about. She was fascinated by all the scientific work we had done on the shawl.
Eventually I asked her the main question, the reason I was there: would she be happy to provide a sample of DNA?

I was very nervous as I asked. I didn’t want to sound presumptuous and I did not want to be intrusive: but I needed her sample.

Eventually I broached the subject, and told her I had two swabs with me if she was willing to help. She said she was happy to.

I was so grateful. I phoned Jari there and then, because I knew he would be as excited as I was. I put M on to the phone to talk to him, and they had a chat about the work he was doing with the
shawl samples.

It was one of those amazing days in this saga, a day when everything went right. Afterwards I took M and a friend of hers to Brick Lane for a curry at my favourite curry house, and then took her
on my own Ripper tour: she had never actually traced the Ripper route before, and she did not know that Matilda and all her extended family had lived in what was now
Greenfield Road. As we walked along, side by side, I hugged to myself the incredible knowledge that I was in the company of a descendant of
his
sister and, what’s more,
she was willing to help me.

The next morning I jumped into my car and drove the familiar route to Jari’s lab in Liverpool. There was no way I was going to entrust this precious DNA sample to the post. With the DNA
from a direct descendant of Matilda Lubnowski, the Ministry of Justice Licence could take a back seat. We had what we needed to move forward: samples from the semen stains on the shawl and samples
from a Kosminski family member down the female line. Everything was set for the final part of the story.

When Jari delivered the semen samples from the shawl to David Miller in Leeds, there were three vials of material, which went straight into David’s freezer at his lab. He
worked on one vial, and within a couple of months he had found the twelve epithelial cells which told us we would be able to get the Ripper’s DNA.

So when it was time to work on the Ripper’s DNA, Jari asked David for the remaining two vials back.

That’s when we made a nightmare discovery. David’s laboratory had moved, and his students were charged with packing up his freezers and unpacking them on to the new site. Somewhere
in transit our vials had been lost. They had searched for them, thoroughly, but it was no good: they had gone.

Jari explained to me that in a lab like David’s everything is marked with a standard code system and, of course, our samples were not part of the normal routine of this lab. They
were marked with symbols which did not match the lab system, which is probably why they were discarded during the move. It’s normal procedure in research and
diagnostic labs to save space: if they do not recognize it, they do not know what it is, it cannot be used and it needs to go. David unpacked the freezers himself, with aid, to look for the vials,
but no luck. I appreciate it was not his oversight.

I was on holiday, staying in a caravan on Anglesey, when Jari rang me with the calamitous news. The weather was bad, my mobile phone signal was rubbish, I was hanging out of the caravan window
in the rain trying to make out what he said.

At first, I thought I had misheard him. I made him repeat it to me. Slowly it sank in: we had lost our raw material. It was catastrophic, and at first I was completely numb, too overwhelmed to
really take it on board.