The 137-year-old mystery surrounding the identity of infamous serial killer, Jack the Ripper, responsible for the brutal rape and murders of at least five women, may have been solved at last. British historian and self-proclaimed ‘Ripperologist’, Russell Edwards has claimed to have made the breakthrough, based on evidence recovered from one of the victims, according to a report in news.com.au.

Mr Edwards purchased a shawl belonging to one of the victims, Catherine Eddowes, 46, in 2007 which contained blood and semen. Eddowes was an orphan with a daughter and two sons who was killed on the same night as the Ripper’s third victim.

Working as a prostitute, she was found brutally murdered at 1:45 am. Her throat was cut and she was disemboweled. Her face was also mutilated. As per reports, the shawl left at the crime scene belonged to the killer, not Eddowes.

Mr Edwards put the shawl through forensic testing where it was found to contain DNA from two separate people. He explained that the DNA work took over four years with issues such as contamination and “many other hurdles” slowing down the process.

“We tested the semen left on the shawl. When we matched that, I was dumbfounded that we actually had discovered who Jack the Ripper truly was.”

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One of the samples matched with a descendant of the female victim while the other matched the descendants of a Polish immigrant. Upon discovering this male’s name, Mr Edwards was able to unravel the mystery with the serial killer’s name being: Aaron Kosminski.

“When we matched the DNA from the blood on the shawl with a direct female descendant of the victim, it was the singular most amazing moment of my life at the time,” said Mr Edwards.

“Considering his DNA is on the shawl that was at the murder scene and he was named, I have never considered anyone else to be the Ripper,” Mr Edwards said.

Notably, Kosminski was born in Klodawa in central Poland in 1865. His family fled the imperial Russian anti-Jewish pogroms and emigrated to east London in the early 1880s. He lived close to the murder scenes.

While Mr Edwards stands firmly behind his claims, some scientists have disputed his testing process and the eventual outcome.

A serial killer, who allegedly murdered 11 people within a span of 18 months in Punjab after offering lifts and then robbing them, was arrested on Tuesday from Rupnagar district. The accused was identified as 33-year-old Ram Saroop, a resident of Chaura village of Garhshankar in Hoshiarpur.

According to the police, the victims were all men with whom he engaged in sexual acts, mainly after offering them lifts. The accused then robbed the men and killed them after altercations or refusal by victims to give him the money. Officials said that in most cases, the accused strangled his victims with a piece of cloth, while in other cases, they died of head injuries.

In one of the murders, the accused wrote ‘Dhokebaaz’ (cheater) on a victim’s back – who was a former soldier working as a security guard in a private factory.

The accused was initially arrested in connection with the murder of a 37-year-old man, who used to serve tea and water at Toll Plaza Modra, on August 18. During interrogation, Saroop revealed that he had killed 10 more people. While five of these cases have been confirmed so far, investigations are underway to trace the remaining murders, the police said.

Some of the cases include the murder of a 34-year-old tractor repairer, who was beaten to death on April 5, and the killing of a young man who was found in a car on January 24. The serial killer has murdered people Rupnagar, Hoshiarpur, and Fategarh districts.

Officials said that the accused, who worked as a labourer, was addicted to drugs.

According to the serial killer, he used to touch the victim’s feet and ask for forgiveness after killing them as he felt remorse. Admitting to committing the crimes only after getting intoxicated, he said that he does not remember them anymore.

The accused was reportedly married with three children, but he was abandoned by his family two years ago due to his homosexuality.

“We have arrested the accused. He will be produced before the court soon,” a police official said.

Convicted Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton died on Friday aged 74 after he was assaulted by another inmate in a maximum-security prison earlier this month, prison authorities said.

One of Canada’s most infamous mass murderers, Pickton was convicted in 2007 of killing drug addicts and prostitutes and butchering their remains at his pig farm in the Pacific province of British Columbia.

He was convicted of killing six women whose partial remains were found on his ramshackle property near Vancouver. Government prosecutors dropped charges for an additional 20 murders after he was sentenced to life in prison.

Canada’s correctional service said Pickton had died after being assaulted on May 19 in the Quebec prison where he had been serving his sentence. Following the assault, he was transported to hospital to receive treatment.

“We are mindful that this offender’s case has had a devastating impact on communities in British Columbia and across the country,” the service said in a statement.

The victims were among more than 60 women who disappeared from Vancouver’s poor, drug-infested Downtown Eastside neighborhood over more than a decade until Pickton’s arrest in early 2002.

The remains or DNA of 33 women, many of whom were Indigenous, were found on Pickton’s pig farm in Port Coquitlam, about 25 kilometers east of downtown Vancouver.

In 2016, a book reportedly written by Pickton was pulled from Amazon within hours of it appearing for sale. In the book, the serial killer said he was innocent and had been framed by police, the Vancouver Sun reported at the time.

The publisher requested its removal from Amazon and apologized to victims’ families.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Kigali, Rwanda:

A man has been arrested in Rwanda after the discovery of more than 10 bodies buried in a hole in the kitchen of his home in the capital Kigali, police and media reports said Wednesday. Police said the 34-year-old suspected serial killer had lured his victims from bars to his rented home in a Kigali suburb.

Local media said more than 10 bodies had been found, and a source in the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) told AFP on condition of anonymity that the number of victims so far was 14.

RIB spokesman Thierry Murangira declined to confirm a figure, telling AFP that “the final number will be determined by forensic investigations”.

The suspect had initially been arrested in July on suspicion of robbery and rape among other offences but was granted bail due to a lack of evidence, he said, quoted by local media.

Investigations continued however and he was rearrested on Tuesday and his home searched, leading to the discovery of the bodies dumped in a pit he had dug in his kitchen.

“The suspect confessed that he learned to kill from watching famous serial killers. He dissolved some of his victims in acid,” the RIB source said.

“He would study his victims before stalking them and usually went for those that are most likely not to have close family or friends to look out for them.”

Murangira said the suspect had confessed during interrogation to the killings and that preliminary investigations had found the victims were both male and female.

“He operated by luring his victims, mostly prostitutes, to his home where he would rob them of their phones and belongings and then strangled them to death and buried them in a hole dug in the kitchen of his rented house,” he added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)