Kosminsky, Aaron

Kneey Hutch Psychiatric Clinic, North London. Kosminsky lived here from 1891 to 1894.

Kosminsky was born in the Polish city of Klodawa , which, like most of Poland , was part of the Russian Empire , in the family of a tailor ^[9] . He had three sisters and a brother. After the assassination of Emperor Alexander II , a wave of pogroms swept across Russia in 1881 , after which most Jews emigrated. In the same year, among the emigrating Jews, there was 16-year-old Aaron Kosminsky, along with his sisters and brother ^[10] .

In 1881, the family moved to the UK and settled in London . Kosminsky's mother, who was listed as a widow, joined them in 1894 . The death certificate of his father in 1887 indicates that Abram Kosminski died in the Polish city of Kolo , just five miles from Grzegorzew , his hometown ^{[11] [12] [13]} .

Whitechapel , a district in London where refugees from Eastern Europe and Tsarist Russia lived, lived and worked as a hairdresser Aaron Kosminsky ^{[14] [15] [16]} .

Already in 1885, he began to notice signs of a mental illness : he was tormented by auditory hallucinations, he was afraid to take food from other people, and refused to wash ^[17] .

It is known that he quit his job and lived at the expense of his sisters ^[11] .

On July 12, 1890, Kosminski was first admitted to a psychiatric hospital, from which he was released three days later. However, on February 4, 1891, he again finds himself in a psychiatric clinic. A certain Jacob Cohen accused Kosminsky of assaulting his sister, and for the next 28 years, until his death, Kosminsky will spend in psychiatric hospitals ^{[11] [18] [19]} .

The footnote says that Kosminsky has been ill since at least 1885. His madness took the form of auditory hallucinations , a paranoid fear of being fed by other people, and refusal to wash or bathe ^[20] .

The interpretation of the cause of the disease, according to medical records, is as follows: "Aaron Kosminsky went crazy due to addiction to sexual self-satisfaction" ^[19] .

Due to poor nutrition, Kosminsky was exhausted for many years ^[19] .

By February 1919, he weighed only 96 pounds (44 kg). He died on March 24, 1919 at the age of 53 in a psychiatric clinic from leg gangrene ^[19] .

Beginning in 1888 , the deaths of eleven women were recorded in the Whitechapel area of ​​the East End of London. These crimes were linked into one police investigation, known as the Whitechapel killings. Seven of eleven victims had their throats cut. In the other four cases, the bodies were mutilated after death.

In 1888, from August to November, the handwriting of the killings was characteristic. This led the police to conclude that there was a serial killer who was nicknamed the Jack the Ripper ^[21] . Despite an active investigation by Scotland Yard policemen, his identity was never identified due to insufficient evidence, and the Jack the Ripper case was officially closed in 1892 ^{[22] [23]} .

Years after the cessation of the killings, documents were found that clearly stated about the suspicions of the police against a person with the name "Kosminski" ^[24] .

In his notes written in 1894 , Sir Melville McNagen, the assistant chief of the London Metropolitan Police, names one of the suspects, a Polish Jew with the name "Kosminski" (without a name). The notes were discovered in 1959 in the personal papers of his daughter, Lady Aberconway, addressed to television journalist Daniel Farson ^[25] . An abridged version of these archives was presented to the public by the police in the 1970s ^[19] . McNagen stated that there are serious reasons to suspect Kosminski, as "strong hatred of women could be the reason for the killings" ^[26] .

In 1910, the Assistant Commissioner, Sir Robert Anderson, noted in his notes entitled “The Brighter Side of My Official Life” that “The Ripper” was “a poor Polish Jew” ^[27] .

Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, who led the investigation of the Ripper case, made marginal copies of Anderson’s memoirs in handwritten notes mentioning the name Kosminski. ^[28] . This copy of the memoir was donated by the descendants of Swanson to the Scotland Yard Crime Museum in 2006. ^[29]

In 1987, author-researcher Martin Fido checked the case files of all prisoners with the surname Kosminski and found only one - Aaron Kosminski ^[30] .

There is a possibility that Aaron Kosminski lived either on Providence Street or Greenfield Street during the murders. Both streets were close to the sites of the killings ^[31] . The addresses of the shelters for the mentally ill presented in police reports are located in the old town of Mil Ann, just on the edge of Whitechapel ^[32] . Aaron's description of the symptoms in the notes to the case indicates that he had paranoid schizophrenia . There are cases of people with schizophrenia who were serial killers , for example, Peter Sutcliff ^[19] .

McNagen's notes state that Kosminsky indulged “lonely vices” ^[26] ; in his memoirs, Anderson wrote about the “indescribable vices” of his suspect ^[33] . Statements made ^{[by whom? ]} may correspond to the notes in the case file that Aaron committed suicide ^[34] . In his notes, Swanson reported that the suspect was identified in a psychiatric clinic in Colney Hatch, which exactly coincides with the known details about Kosminski’s life ^[35] , except for the only detail - his early death ^[36] .

Anderson claimed that the “Ripper” was identified as “the only person who looked most like a murderer,” but the prosecution of the suspect was not possible because both the witness and the criminal were Jews and the Jews refused to testify against compatriots ^[27] . McNagen wrote that “no one has ever seen Whitechapel’s killer,” which directly contradicts the memoirs of Anderson and Swanson ^[37] .

In his notes, Henry Smith, the acting commissar of the London police , rejected Anderson’s statement that the Jews would not testify against each other, calling him a “reckless accusation” of Jews ^[38] . Inspector Edmund Reid, who was initially responsible for the investigation, also challenged Anderson’s opinion. ^[39]

All official police documents that have been preserved do not contain records about Aaron Kosminsky, except for McNagen's notes ^[40] .

Only two incidents of Kosminsky's violent behavior were recorded when he was detained by police: for attempting to attack his sister with a knife and attempting to hit with a chair an orderly from a psychiatric clinic in January 1892 ^[41] . At the clinic for the mentally ill, Kosminsky spoke mostly in his native language, Yiddish . Most likely, he did not know English well, which means he could not convince the English-speaking victims to go with him into the dark alleys, since it was assumed that the “Ripper” did just that ^[42] .

The killings of the "canonical five", which the "Ripper" is accused of, ended in 1888, but investigations into Kosminsky continued until 1892 ^[43] .

DNA proof

On September 7, 2014, Dr. Jari Louchelainen, an expert in historical DNA analysis , announced that researcher Russell Edwards had ordered him to conduct a DNA test of the biomaterials contained on the shawl ^{[3] [44]} , which was found near the murdered Catherine Adddows. Shawl Edwards acquired at auction in 2007. The found DNA samples were compared with the genetic material of the Kosminsky descendants ^{[3] [6] [45]} . Louchelainen stated that “the first DNA strand showed a 99.2% match. When testing the second circuit, an ideal 100% match was obtained ” ^[46] . The results of the DNA test were presented by evidence of a forensic examination ^[47] .

In his book The Names of Jack the Ripper, Edwards called Aaron Kosminski the Jack the Ripper. He wrote that the issue of the Whitechapel murders was finally closed. ^[47] Edwards claimed that Kosminsky was on the list of police suspects , but while the investigation was ongoing, there was not enough evidence to bring him to court ^[48] .

In his speech, Edwards noted ^[47] :

I spent 14 years researching who was the killer. Now we have finally revealed the secret of who was Jack the Ripper. Only unbelievers who want to perpetuate the myth will doubt it. This myth is dispelled by us.

However, the conclusions of Louchelainen were not subjected to peer review by other scientists or researchers ^[6] . Professor Sir Alec Jeffries , a forensic expert who invented a method for extracting DNA from fingerprints in 1984 , said that the discovery of Louhehlainen was “an interesting statement that should be subjected to expert evaluation, with a detailed analysis of the origin of the shawl and the nature of the claimed DNA correspondence with the offspring of the criminal " ^[6] . He also noted that evidence of DNA results has not yet been verified by independent third parties ^[6] . Donald Rumbelov stated that the shawl Eddows could not be evidence for the police ^[49] , because it could be contaminated “before” or “during” the DNA test ^[50] .

Despite criticism, Luhelainen continued to defend his work ^{[51] [52]} . In March 2019, he, together with a researcher at the Reproduction and Early Development Group of the Institute of Genetics, Health and Therapy of the University of Leeds, David Miller, published his work in the peer-reviewed journal Journal of Forensic Sciences ^{[53] [54]} . Critical comments were made by some scientists ^[55] .

Kosminski and the David Cohen

Among the suspects in the murders of Jack the Ripper was another Polish Jew - Aaron Davis Cohen or David Cohen, whose conclusion at the Cologne-Hutch Psychiatric Clinic roughly coincided with the time of the last murder. This happened on December 12, 1888, about a month after the murder of Mary Jane Kelly on November 9. Cohen was described as brutally antisocial, showing destructive tendencies during his stay in the shelter and not knowing how to be restrained. He was the same age as Kosminsky, and he died in a psychiatric clinic in October 1889 ^[56] .

Martin Fido in the book Crimes, Detection, and Death of the Jack the Ripper ( 1987 ) suggested that the name “David Cohen” was used as the usual name of the prisoner, and the real name and surname (Kosminski or Kaminsky) were too difficult to pronounce and it was easy to misunderstand ^[57] . Fido called Cohen "Leather Apron" - a Polish Jewish shoemaker that locals gossiped about as if he were a killer. Fido suggested that Cohen's true identity was Nathan Kaminsky, a shoemaker living in Whitechapel ^[58] . Fido believed that police officers confused the name Kaminsky with Kosminsky, as a result of which the wrong person fell under suspicion ^[36] . As in the case of Kosminsky, the records of the clinic for the mentally ill say that he spoke only Yiddish ^[59] .

Former FBI forensic scientist John E. Douglas claimed in his book Cases That Haunt Us that behavioral evidence gathered during a murder investigation points to a man “known to the police as David Cohen ... or someone very similar to him” ^{[60] [61]} .