Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Jack the Ripper IDENTIFIED

Episode Date: February 16, 2025

There are at least five murders attributed to "Jack the Ripper". Mary Ann Nichols: The first confirmed victim, murdered on August 31, 1888 Annie Chapman: Murdered on September 8, 1888 Elizabeth Stride: Murdered on September 30, 1888 Catherine Eddoweson: Murdered on September 30, 1888 Mary Jane Kelly: Murdered on November 9, 1888 Some people believe there were victims prior to August 31, 1888, and after November 9, 1888. That is a discussion for a different day. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the evidence that includes DNA from one of the victims as well as a possible suspect and how working with genealogists led investigators to the only person that could have provided the DNA found on the shawl of Catherine Eddoweson.  Case Solved!     Transcript Highlights 00:00.46 Introduction of Jack The Ripper case 04:02.28 Joe Scott describes time in London 09:11.12 Immigration impact 13:35.86 Murders included in the Jack the Ripper case 18:35.25 Studying the case 22:25.38 Developing skills with knife 28:47.48 Suspect described - leather apron 34:15.31 Ripper Case sold a lot of news papers 38:55.85 DNA from Shawl 43:45.68 Victim and suspect DNA evidence 49:28.75 Suspect was "hair dresser" as well as barber 50:13.83 ConclusionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Moore. I travel a lot now at this stage in my life. You think that it's going to be kind of the opposite, you know, that you would slow down maybe the more miles you get on your tires. But for me, that's sped up. And I go to Great Britain a lot now. You know, a couple of times a year, it seems.

I'll be going back again in June, as a matter of fact, for ChromeCon. The thing that's so attractive to me about London and Great Britain in general is how ancient it is from our sensibilities. Not if you're Greek, obviously, but ancient enough. And one area in London in particular is notable. And not because of maybe some infamous things you've heard about it relative to

homicide but because an old roman road ran through it as a matter of fact that old roman road made up the outer defenses of what was once called not London, but Londinium, which is the old Roman settlement right along the Thames River that runs through the middle of London. Today, we're going to talk about something, I think, in our modern minds that seems ancient, but really wasn't that long ago, just over 100 years ago, that happened that sent shockwaves through London and, by that measure, around the world. And that is the murders that occurred in Whitechapel. chapel. Those murders have been infamously connected to one individual that went by the name of Jack the Ripper. And the question is, has his identity, has this perpetrator

been finally positively identified? I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Dave, I know I prattle on and on about Great Britain and my travels over there and probably get tired of hearing about it. I just wish I could drag you along with me. It wouldn't take much to do it. I think we'd have a glorious time. Um, but you know, this, uh, this last time that, uh, Kimmy and I were in, uh, in London for CromCon, we'll say it would be the London CromCon 2024. Um, we stayed adjacent to where the meeting was being held, but we, we stayed over a few extra days cause I went and visited universities while I was there and we wound up staying in White Chapel. And I got to tell you, I know you're going to laugh at me. We did a lot of touristy things because I'd never spent time in White Chapel

and all of my visits to London. So with that said, let me tell you what we did that was kind of touristy. I love fish and chips. I do. It's better than any kind of American fast food. I love fish anyway. And you get these big, deep-fried, golden pieces of heaven. And you put the malt vinegar on it and maybe a little tartar sauce.

And the pieces are so big, just one piece of fish will satisfy you. And it's golden brown. And of course, they're famous for their chips, which are not chips. They're french fries. And then here's the other thing that Kim is like really into, mushy peas, which are English peas that are mashed up with a bit of onion and garlic salt in them, or garlic powder, I think, in them. And they're almost like mashed potatoes, and everybody eats them. And it's an interesting combination. I do not have a palate that would survive that, just saying. Well, the reason I'm telling you this, the restaurant that we went to,

which is right on the main drag through the middle of White Chapel, where Jack the Ripper probably strode about. The name of the chip stand is actually called, you ready for this? Jack the Chipper. Jack the Chipper? So, you know, we went there like, I don't know, probably three times and eight and it was always late at night cause our days ran so long and you're always kind of in a funk

anyway because the time change your body, it takes a while for your body to get adjusted. For me, it does particularly at this age, but the other indulgence that I, that I have is I love going to the Turkish barbershop and Turkish barbers are all over great Britain and they're amazing at what they do. You know, everything from the hot towel around your face to, you know, the shave with an actual straight razor, which is, you know, kind of, I don't know, uh, kind of interesting in white chapel. What do you put it? Put it that way. Um, and you really get tended to, uh, they even give you a, uh, uh, a glass of whiskey. You probably need that just to survive the fear factor of going in and into white chapel

where Jack the Ripper is known worldwide and you got a guy with a blade. Yeah. And scissors. So anyway, the name of the barber is called Jack the Clipper. And so I've got pictures. I'll post them on my social media. So we went there. But, you know, when we went back to the barbershop, Dave, this is when it kind of hit me because the roads, the streets, I say roads, but the streets that you run through. They're paved, obviously, but every now and then you'll see a crack in the asphalt and you'll see the old cobblestones that are immediately beneath. And just for a moment,

in my own crazy mind, you can hear the clatter of horse hooves, or you can hear the sound of a buggy, you know, kind of rumbling down the street. And the streets are still very dark. It's very, very dark and everything is kind of closed in and yeah it's obviously more illuminated than it was back in the 1880s but just for a moment tom you can appreciate what a kind of interesting environment it would have been in particularly if you're uh working as a prostitute turning tricks out there on these dark, and there's these little cubby holes that kind of extend, they're kind of like little back alleys, and they would actually ply their trade, and not to be too inappropriate, but, you know, these prostitutes would many times

conduct their trade standing against a wall, you know, with a john that would come along. And either that or they would take them back to, and here's an interesting bit of trivia as well, take them back to their crib. And we hear, you know, we've heard the word crib in the modern vernacular for ever and ever. We're going to go back to the crib. Well, you know, the origin of the word crib as it applies to a dwelling actually goes to prostitution. The prostitutes had cribs that they would go to. That's what they referred to them as. And a lot of these prostitutes had babies.

You know, they would be, you know, in a crib, within the crib, in the same room while they're turning tricks. It was a different world back then. And I hope that I've kind of painted the picture through my own two eyes here relative to the best that I can kind of target in for those that have never been there. A lot of interesting little areas and alcoves in Whitechapel. And, you know, you've got big businesses that have popped up, headquarters for all kinds of people there. Ladbible, which is internationally known. Actually, I did an interview on Ladbible, taped it there just adjacent to Whitechapel. Their studios are there. But you've also got a

large traditional, and I'm saying not recent, but traditional immigrant community. This is one of the first places where people from Bangladesh that was part of the British Empire came to the UK and set up businesses and have restaurants and all these sorts of things. And then there was a large Jewish population that was also part of this environment, along with other nationalities. So it was, you know, we talk about being a melting pot here in America. I don't think that people really realize the comings and goings of immigrants in London, because it's all long before we ever existed as a country here in the U.S. Great Britain has always been an international city and they would hop right off the boat off the Thames, which by the way is, I'm not going to say it's a stone's throw,

but as you start heading south, Whitechapel is on the north shore of the Thames. And as you start heading south and kind of southwest, you run right into the Tower of London, Dave, where, you know, people were held in prison and all that sort of thing. This is an ancient, ancient area. It's where the city actually kind of began all those, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. So this kind of dark specter that has always lingered over this area of London, it's not necessarily surprising that something so ghastly would happen there. those days, you know, you had violence, but to the level that Jack the Ripper, uh, quote, unquote, um, perpetrated these crimes, um, not nothing like this. This is why it kind of grabbed the attention of, of all of the, you know, the, the newspapers and, you know, rags of that day, you know, because everything was really over the top with these events. And people think, you know, that people think that Jack the Ripper was limited to

five to seven victims. It was actually, there was, there was what was called the White Chapel murders. It's, it's goes under different names. They actually extended out to 1891. There were actually 11 victims, but not all of them had the same M.O. as Jack the Ripper. And that's what made them think that those were part and parcel of this, because the five Ripper cases that we're going to talk about actually do have a number of similarities. But what about the other ones? Are they dramatically different or just not? Were they earlier or later? Because you said 1891.

They were later. Okay. And so I think that some people kind of believe that perhaps they were in a way of thinking they may have been kind of a copycat type of event, you know, that kind of went along with the narrative of Jack the Ripper. Now, there was one case that occurred, I think it was like April the 3rd, 1888. Yeah. The ones that, and that's kind of outside of the descriptors for the actual Jack the Ripper cases, which, you know, I think ran pretty much through the month of September of 1888 and wound up going. I think the final one that they really, truly tagged him with was in November of 19. So they actually occurred over a very short period of time. But you had other ones that involved things like strangulation, you know what I'm saying, that didn't necessarily fit the MO.

You had one of the victims that was essentially gang raped and robbed, they just didn't fit the mo and you know what they did with that one you mentioned the gang you know they actually tried that one and ended up attributing it they even though it didn't match up there was no evidence or anything else they they i think were like caught up in the swell of the and i think they just added it to it because they didn't have a solved crime with it. You know, it was a gang and it was, I, cause I read up on those. I, it was so funny, funny, strange because when they had this one, it was different and yet they took it to trial. Yeah. And, you know, here's an interesting thing, Dave, you know, this area, I've been, you know, I've been kind of, you know, with my amusements about this and being kind of lighthearted.

But these are real people, you know, were real, real people. And these were really, you know, violent of the things, and this is kind of a thread that runs through a lot of cases even now to this day, these were the poorest of the poor. I mean, this was a slum area. And, you know, sometimes, you know, I've talked to police officers that police in really impoverished areas. And it's not necessarily that the police don't want to do anything about it. Many times it's because the people that are, let's see, that should be the governmental benefactors of the individual that are indigent and poor don't put resources. And nothing, you know, they say nothing's new under the sun. So the fact that these poor women who were turning tricks in dark alleys, you know, with their babies maybe there and that sort of thing, you know, it very well may have been a different outcome and it may have ceased a lot quicker. Here's an interesting little aside, too. And I, you know, look, I got to interject a little bit of my background relative to working serial deaths.

Dave, I've only been involved in one set of serialized homicides where they weren't prostitutes. And that was a group of elderly ladies that had been strangled and sexually assaulted and strangled to death. Every other series, whether it was New Orleans or Atlanta, over the course of my career, always involved prostitutes every single time. So, you know, going back to the old adage of nothing new under the sun, I've never had cases, though, like the Ripper, where you had individuals that were mutilated, and mutilation plays a big part in this. And that's, I think that that was really the start

of what was going on. The cases that I worked primarily dealt with manual strangulation, ligature strangulation, or execution-style gunshot wounds to the back of the head. But they were all to a person, prostitutes. I never worked. I know a lot of – I've had colleagues that have worked cases over the years. You think of the Golden State killer out West, obviously, where you had just random people that were being killed in their homes. Ted Bundy, for instance, those poor women were not prostitutes, you know, primarily young college

students, those sorts of things. But for me, and I think that a lot of people that work in death investigation, most are going to be, and it's that they're so easily targeted and that they're attaining some kind of thrill off of this, that is the perpetrator, and they're easily victimized. And again, that cycles back to this idea that it makes the cases somewhat very difficult to solve. And of course, here we are all these years later, Dave, from the 1880s to, as we're taping right now, 2025, where these cases still give us pause to scratch our head. And maybe, just maybe, as a result of recent information, we're one step closer to solving one of the biggest true crime mysteries of all time. I had the opportunity, and I've mentioned this man before, to work with a fellow named William Eckert. Dr. Eckert was a forensic pathologist, rather famous in his time. And Dr. Eckert, toward the end of his career, well, I guess it was kind of later mid-range of his career, traveled all over the world consulting on cases. And one of the cases that he did, or cases,

plural, that he consulted on was Jack the Ripper., he was, I think, probably one of the first people to visit Scotland Yard. He took a look at a lot of the evidence that still existed, police reports, those sorts of things, and, you know, visited sites. And this is back, I think, in the 1970s. And he drew some conclusions during that period of time. And I remember asking, because I'd never really had a huge overriding interest in the Ripper cases. I just, and when you work, when you're working in death investigation, it's not like, it's not like people that do death investigation as a profession sit around and watch true crime. It's not like, you know, it's a busman's holiday. It's not something that we're necessarily interested in, but because he had been drawn into it i was we just finished up an autopsy one day and i remember asking dr eckert specifically dr eckert i'm fascinated by the

fact that you went to great britain and that you've consulted with sc Yard on the Ripper cases, you know, a few years back. I said, what's your overriding opinion here? You know, what do you believe? And he told me at that time, and I think that this was probably pretty widely known, but to hear it coming from him, a guy that works with scalpels and dissecting knives and scissors every single day of his life and had at that point in time for over 30 years, he pointedly said to me, this guy was skilled with edged weapons based upon everything that he had seen. And that really, I'm not going to say it sent a chill up my spine, Dave, but it did

give me an insight, I think, into what those people may have been looking at back then, and it, you know, I think that we're, all of us would be fools to assume that they didn't have violent crime back then, that they didn't have people that were mutilated. A lot of people carried knives. They didn't just carry knives merely to protect themselves. They carried knives because they were integral in day-to-day life, you know, cutting things and prying things. People carried knives back then. So it would not have been unusual for somebody to carry a knife. But when you begin to think about skill, that goes to

training, doesn't it? It goes to a certain touch, if you will. And so when Dr. Eckert said that to me, it really kind of grabbed me. Well, Joe, when we look at these, the five specific Ripper murders that all showed a talent, medically speaking, that's a pretty big deal when you're looking at the 1880s. It's not like what we have now with the education we have. You've walked me through how medical schools have come to be and what is and isn't expected from back then. But what kind of a person would develop these kinds of skills that would not be known to law enforcement? I mean, you mentioned barber, but is there any other field where a person would develop the kind of biological knowledge necessary to be able to do this? There's a plethora of them. Um, anybody that, that worked in, um, anybody that worked in a butcher shop, anybody that worked in a slaughterhouse, uh, for those of you that have never been to a slaughterhouse,

which I have been, it's, uh, if you think that morgues are ghastly, you cannot imagine carnage on an assembly line level. And I've been to chicken slaughterhouses. I've been to hog slaughterhouses. And it's something to behold on it. And when you're holding a knife in your hand, you just develop a skill set. It's like swinging a golf club or a baseball bat or even using a sewing needle. It's just – or if you're a cobbler working on shoes. I don't know.

Do cobblers still exist? I think they do. They do, yeah. But, you know, it's just – not to say that cobblers, you know. I'm just saying it's just a skill set, you know, like cobbling with shoes, you know, it's just not to say that cobblers, you know, what I'm just saying, it's just a skill set, you know, that like cobbling with shoes, you know, taking soles off and all that stuff. You become really good with hammers, right? You become really good with tacks and nails and all that sort of stuff. And so, yeah, we've got, you know, we've got groups of individuals that work at slaughterhouses. And there were open markets. Matter of fact, one of the biggest markets in London

is immediately adjacent to Whitechapel. As a matter of fact, it was that particular market supplied the royal family with a lot of their goods. And they would slaughter animals right there. So you've got those individuals. It wasn't done in some distant location where it'd be trucked in because they didn't truck stuff in back then. You had to do it there because they knew that the meat would rot. Um, then of course, you know, you had mentioned, uh, you had mentioned barbers. Well, there's a long tradition of, of barbers,

uh, going back, uh, hundreds and hundreds of years where these individuals were not just there to cut your hair, but they were also there to do surgeries as well. That's one of the significance of the barber pole. You know, the white stripe, the blue stripe, and the red stripe, every time you see that, those colors are emblematic of different skill sets. And that pole goes back a long, long time. And that was to give people an indication that if you, you know, if you need a tumor removed from your neck, or if you need a trim, come on in, we'll take care of it. We'll take care of it. That puts the whole Jack the Clipper thing all in a new perspective, doesn't it? They did not offer to do surgery on me there, but I have no doubt that they would have been

rather skilled. And then you have those that are involved in medicine, Dave. You had surgeons. And for many years, there was a through line, a thread that ran through everything that gave you an indication that, well, a lot of people have opined over the years. Everybody's got an opinion, you know, that this was some kind of maniac surgeon that was running about. And one of the indications was that I think either one or two of the women had had their wombs removed. And that's a very specific anatomical feature that you're looking for. to see how can I put this in order to remove female internal sex organs is not something that's easily undertaken without a level of skill. You know what I'm saying? It's something that it takes a bit. Well, first off, you have to have specific anatomical knowledge. And not to say that the uterus, the womb, is not located approximately in the same location, say, in a hog or, you know, in some other goat or

sheep. But, you know, with the way our anatomical orientation is set up, it's a bit different. And that specific organ in and of itself, a lot can be implied. Well, you know, some people thought that, you know, if the womb is being removed, that it would be for some type of medical purpose, perhaps. I don't know what that might be. Maybe it was just an exploration of female anatomy. But Dave, you know, now kind of understanding just at a baseline for you and I both, because neither one of us are forensic psychologists, that's, if this wasn't sexualized enough, that's very sexualized. And then what are you going to do with it once you get it? Are you retaining it? Is it a trophy? I mean, precisely. But let me ask you something quickly, because I'm concerned that you're talking about an intense, knowledge driven, anatomical, you know, pulling out of

something. And yet we're talking about Whitechapel, which is dark, dank, scary at its best. So wouldn't doing this type of carnage require light to do it? I mean, wouldn't you need to have enough light to see what you were doing? Well, brother, that goes to skill again, right? I mean, I'm not saying that there are people out there that could do surgery in the dark, however, or autopsy in the dark. First off, I've cut myself many times at autopsies. I'd certainly be missing a finger, you know, if you tried to do it in the dark. But, you know, you still have, it's that tactile nature. So let's just say they're using, I don't know if that area was electrified. I doubt that it was at that early on. I would imagine streetlights were probably, I'm sure that they had gas I can't imagine the poorest of the poor in the slums having access to a gas line coming into a crib, you know, a prostitute. And some of these women were found in yards, Dave.

They're found in yards and alleyways. They're not necessarily found within the crib itself. So to have them kind of lying about, that to your point doesn't it this was done outdoors at night with whatever this individual is carrying on their person and here's another interesting tidbit to all of this it's this idea of the leather apron, you know, because you've got many of the prostitutes that were interviewed at that particular time had stated that whoever this individual was, uh, uh, he's, he has a rather hair suit mustache, uh, and, uh, he's wearing a leather apron. Well, who wear, who, who in the world would wear a leather apron?

Well, back then you didn't, I mean, they had vulcanized rubber, but you know, in the morgue, uh, people wore rubber aprons, uh, but not back then. People all wore leather. Surgeons wore leather aprons, if not cloth, something that they could take off and be washed. But leather aprons, I've seen images of them from the Civil War, for instance. And they're things that you can apply water and soap to and just kind of wash it off. And butchers wore leather aprons. Medical professionals probably wore leather aprons. I think the big question is, would a barber wear a leather apron or would they merely wear some kind of overcoat, you know, or like almost like a lab coat? But I would suspect that many of them wore leather aprons. Well, why would you want to do that? And why would that individual be walking around? Who's going to, you know, I guess

if you saw somebody back then with a leather apron on walking about, you would assume that there's some kind of tradesman, right? That they're, you know, that they're going from, you know, wherever it is, they make barrels or make shoes or, or maybe work in a butcher in a slaughterhouse, they're going to wear a leather apron. But that, you know, that goes to the idea that the individual is trying to protect their clothing and trying to protect themselves from being splashed with blood. Not that they necessarily had DNA. Karl Landsteiner hadn't even come along yet to invent blood typing. That would be a couple of decades later. You're trying to protect your clothing so that you don't get spattered with blood at that point in time. So you've got these little

threads that kind of run along with this individual where you're looking at the subject that would have done it? And we can talk all day about motivation. Is it an individual that, and I think that you and I both, Dave, can answer in the affirmative, that absolutely hated women? Because we don't have any male victims. There's no male victims that we know about from that period of time that are dis souls were subjected to, Dave, this would take a copious amount of time to do this. This is not like something where you stick a knife into their throat or slit their throat and then walk away. This is somebody that truly, truly hated these women who knows what the, this kind of seed of evil was that, you know,

kind of indwell this, but I do know this, that with every slice, with every cut, with every puncture, with every mutilation, with every droplet of blood that was found, pulled in the yards, in the rooms, and on the streets of Whitechapel, that stain, to this day, still exists. Dave, I'm viewing you here on the camera, and Bubba, it looks like you've got a fresh haircut. Yeah, thanks. You just got your haircut? You look good, man, I've got you here on the camera, and Bubba, it looks like you've got a fresh haircut. You think? You just got your haircut. You look good, man. I've got to tell you.

Yeah. Dude's got a great, great crown of white hair. I'll tell you what. Well, there's a barber we're going to talk about today. Me and Santa have great hair on our head and great bellies above our waist, so there you go. Oh, man. Come on. You ain't got no belly.

Yeah. The barber we're going to talk about is a fellow named Aaron Kosminski. And he is known to have been a Polish immigrant. Can I add something very quickly? Yeah, sure. All right. Something I didn't know about the story until you and I started talking about it. And we talked about it from the end and going back.

There was a lot of press coverage of these murders. There was a lot of chatter. Social media would have been set at Twitter, although people might not have used Twitter. But you know what I mean? It was a much talked about thing. They were constantly throwing out ideas and the media was highly involved in sharing rumors and drawings of people that were victimized or possible suspects. This was a case that drew a lot of attention and sold a lot of papers. And in looking at what some of the investigators did to try to find, you know, a solution, they it was just amazing to me. This was not something that when you

mentioned it earlier, first of all, it only lasted a couple of months, you know, and these five main ones. Now, the others could certainly be part of it, but just these five, we're talking from August 31st to November the 9th in 1888. That's not a very big window. And I don't assume that Marianne Nichols was butchered the way she was as a first attack. And it just seems like they did escalate from there, from Marianne Nichols' attack to Annie Chapman's attack to Elizabeth Stride. Each one got progressively different and worse, but there was that thread running through that tied them all together. So there's got to be more, I'm thinking. Yeah, yeah.

I think that there has to be. And there's a boldness that kind of sets in with this. But in the modern context now, I think that for us, what's so striking about this recent news that has dropped, not only do we have a person that is named now because of one alleged, uh, uh, sampling that has been done relative to

a genetic finding, uh, this, uh, Aaron, uh, uh, Kominsky. Uh, but we have to think about the source, uh, you know, where did this come from? We've got this connection now from DNA linkage from a shawl that was possessed and owned by essentially the fifth victim from September the 30th, 1888, Catherine Edwison. And Dave, I've seen the shawl, the shawl, you know, the shawl is nothing like I thought that it would look like, because I was thinking, you know, when I think shawl, um, I think kind of a, a loose, uh, woven, you know, kind of, uh, uh, what am I saying? Almost looks like an Afghan, I guess, kind of. You know what I'm saying? It's not like that. The shawl is actually, even today, I'm actually sitting here, you know, taking a look at this thing, is actually quite beautiful. It's in two colors. It's tightly, tightly woven. I would imagine that this shawl

is primarily made of wool. And, you know, Great Britain was known for the wool trade, and it's been dyed. It's in two different colors. One color is this striking kind of light blue color. And the rest of it, there's a distinctive dividing line that has almost around your shoulders, you're not going to feel the breeze, if you will, the cold kind of seeping through. It's quite lovely, actually, to see. So when I think about the deposition of any kind of DNA or biological evidence that might be found on there, you could see how it could get down into those really tightly woven fibers and be retained. Here's kind of the interesting thing, though. It's through the shawl. And by the way, this, this individual's, uh, Russell Edwards is his name, who is the actual owner of the shawl. Now, was this something passed down? Was he related or is it bought at auction?

That's the one, that's the one trick to this that I've been unable to kind of put together, uh, succinctly. I do know that this journey starts back in 2006, so we're talking now two decades, I guess now. Well, almost two decades since this journey kind of started relative to this item. You know, what's the provenance of this? How did he actually come into possession of this? And he started looking at attempting, because he knew what he had was connected to a victim. You know, you would think that something like a shawl like this would be retained you know by the metropolitan police which is scotland yard but you know how many thousands and thousands of crimes have they had that involve physical evidence since anybody wondering right since 1880

something there's there's not enough room in the world to to store all of this stuff the particular case of that shawl though it actually was a sergeant on duty and who actually he was acting sergeant um amos simpson is the guy who was near the crime scene and he's the one that got katherine shawl and he's the one that passed it down to family members until it pops up in 2007, and author Russell Edwards buys it. But according to Amos Simpson, this was the Shaw that he picked up near the scene. Well, again.

But where's the trade? Yeah, I know. Exactly. You begin to think about the provenance of the, let me see, how can I say this, of the evidence. Yeah, the chain of custody. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I had a-

I did, too. I was looking at you going, please say it. I had a mental cramp. I'm losing it. I'm losing it. Yeah, there's no chain of custody here. We have to trust that Amos Simpson recovered this shawl and then, because they didn't have paper bags. I don't know what they had then.

I was going to say they didn't have plastic bags, but they would have used paper bags or cloth to store something like this, right? Probably cloth, I would imagine, particularly for a bloody item that they didn't want to. And they didn't wear gloves. So you would, unless they had leather gloves on. Right. If it doesn't fit you must quit yeah you imagine taking those off and stick them back in your pocket and your wife says hey can i borrow your gloves and all manner of things that you've that you've touched but yeah and so here here's here's the thing for me if he's present this acting sergeant if he's present, this acting sergeant, if he's present at the scene, he's picked this thing up.

You would expect the victim's DNA to be on it. So what's the sourcing? Where did her DNA come from? Was it blood or was it some other bodily fluid that had leached onto the surface? But here's the big thing, Dave. Here's the big thing. If we're looking at Aaron Kaminsky, who, by the way, is Polish, but he's also Jewish, and there's been a thread of anti-Semitism that has run through this for a long, long time. I mean, dating well back decades, I think, relative to suspects where they were trying to as well, because if Aaron Kaminsky was known to anybody with the Met and they had it in for him, how did they, you know, did they get a blood source for him? Or is, and it would be also important, is this a seminal?

Is this, is this ejaculate that was left behind on the shawl? Now, we can say, you know, I think you could say pretty confidently that if it's ejaculate, then that bit of DNA would be harder to come by. Say, for instance, if it were, you know, a touch of his blood that was placed on it or whatever. But, you know, that still doesn't make sense because, as I said, blood typing is not something that was done at that point in time. It's not something certainly, you know, blood typing itself. I mentioned Karl Landsteiner a few moments ago. Blood typing itself, when it first came into being, was not for the purposes of crime science on any level. It was trying to find a match so that we could do transfusions. And again, we could do a whole episode on that.

They actually used to try to use lamb's blood to transfuse people with. And as you can imagine, that didn't work out too well, sheep's blood. And so, you know, trial and error. And so, but anyway, I digress. The fact that you do have both of these individuals, the victim and Aaron Kosminski, you have his DNA that is present here. And Dave, this is not something that, you know, no insult intended, but it's not something that the London Sun merely conjured up, okay? This was actually written up in the Journal of Forensic Science, which is one of the most esteemed academic journals in forensic science that exists.

This paper, I think, first appeared in 2018. This is something that has been in the process of occurring lo these many years. Now, here's the big question, okay? Just because you have, and I hate to rain on everybody's parade here, but just because you have Aaron Kosminski's DNA deposition on that shawl, which again, you cannot necessarily verify the provenance of, okay. It would not hold up in court. No, not, not in our courts. I don't even think that it would hold up in the courts then. But does it mean that he's necessarily connected to the other homicides that occurred? So you've only got connectivity to this one individual right now.

And the odds that they're going to have any other kind of physical evidence that can tie it back, um, that can tie it back to this individual, I think would probably be slim and none right now. And at this point, Tom, at least that that's to my way of thinking, I don't know how you feel about it, but I, that's just my thought. I actually, I did the same thing in my head, Joe. I, I, I pulled a Nancy grace and played devil's advocate for a minute. And I'm like, OK, if we were in a court of law, this we actually have a shawl that was from the crime scene. We have an actual police officer who collected the shawl as evidence, you know, for the future, but they couldn't do anything with it. Then it was just a piece of evidence that was attached to the victim. And so assuming we can make a few assumptions here and based on those assumptions that everything's the way it should be then testing

and coming back with a positive result that actually is a person who actually fits the profile of the potential suspect in the crime i think it's again court of public opinion we could get a conviction well i gotta tell you the met Scotland Yard, they actually had a Kosminski, am I pronouncing that correctly, Kosminski? They actually had an individual listed on their suspect list, but they didn't have it listed with a first name, but they did in fact say that the individual was in an insane asylum. And as it turns out, uh, this individual was in an insane asylum, uh, and eventually died in one. Uh, and of all things he had been committed are you ready for this for threatening his sister with a knife and he had had you know he had had other problems quote-unquote if you will along the way so yeah does he does he fit a particular type well yeah i'd say that he would be a good candidate if

you and i were working a case like this. Now, he would certainly be somebody I would want to sit down and have as the let's keep this British here to have a chin wag with over, you know, over his whereabouts and his connectivity to any of these women where he was domiciled, where he was living at this particular time. Was he actually functioning as a barber? And they don't just, here's something else that's interesting. They don't just list his occupation as a barber, but also a hairdresser. So I'm wondering, you know, is he attending to women? Because in the modern parlance, you know, when you think hairdresser, I don't know about you. Uh, I still go to a guy named Pete to get my haircut. Um, I don't go to a hairdresser, hairdresser, that term

is generally associated with women having their hairstyle. Wow. Isn't that kind of fascinating as well? When you begin to think about that, and I know I'm running kind of far field here, but here he is lingering over ladies, perhaps, and he's quote-unquote dressing their hair. And all the while, he's circulating around them with sharp objects, you know, fascinated by them. And I can't imagine that a prostitute necessarily would have the type of money that would be required to go to a formal hairdresser. I've actually had cases involving serialized homicides, one in particular that stands out. I had a gentleman that every time he would go and get into a fight with his girlfriend,

he would go out and kill a prostitute. And so there's that transference of anger, you know, that takes place. I don't know. It's just, look, we could speculate about this all day long, but I think that it's interesting. It's certainly interesting. I felt like that you and I were, you know, that we needed to talk about this on Body Bags, because let's face it, whether you're interested in crime science or true crime or not, you have to admit that after all of these years, as we look back through decades and articles and verbiage and conversations and whispers and rumors and everything, when it comes down to it, those events that occurred in Whitechapel all those years ago,

that was really the first time that we began to think about a serialized event. Now, obviously, it wasn't called that back then, but this is the first, I believe, and certainly the most widely known serial perpetrator in history. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.