Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about this DNA evidence, supposedly according to
Speaker 2: this historian who worked with some forensic scientists matching DNA
Speaker 2: from one of the victim's silk shawl with this Polish barber,
Speaker 2: Aaron Kosminsky, who lived in the Whitechapel area. He was
Speaker 2: a barber. By all accounts, he had some mental health issues.
Speaker 2: I think he was suffering from paranoia and delusions. Do
Speaker 2: you think that sort of fits, you know, with the
Speaker 2: gruesome nature of the murders or is it maybe a
Speaker 2: distraction from more tangible evidence.
Speaker 3: I mean, great question, and I think the answer is
Speaker 3: we just don't know. Typically, serial killers, at least you know,
Speaker 3: from what I've learned, they're very sort of well put
Speaker 3: together in terms of their methodology and their thinking. They're
Speaker 3: very focused. They're very clearly focused. I was talking before
Speaker 3: the break, many of them sort of have this OCD component.
Speaker 3: With the respect to the BTK serial killer whose daughter
Speaker 3: I'd become friends with, interesting people hosting true crime shows.
Speaker 3: But you know, he was able to literally one moment,
Speaker 3: Dennis Rader could be the president of the church. He
Speaker 3: was an animal control officer. He was a family man,
Speaker 3: but then he could compartmentalize and then go ahead and
Speaker 3: do this. But he, to you know, the average person,
Speaker 3: was seemingly a very normal, functioning member of society. And
Speaker 3: I was also, as you were reading about Aaron Kazminsky,
Speaker 3: he did have some mental health issues. He was a barber,
Speaker 3: you know, he could fit the bill. But there are
Speaker 3: plenty of serial killers who obviously are depraved and demented,
Speaker 3: but at least they give the outward appearance that they
Speaker 3: are functioning normally in society, whereas Kuzminsky didn't. So maybe
Speaker 3: it was a bit of a red herring. We simply
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: Right because my understanding he was also confined to an
Speaker 2: asylum from time to time, raising some questions about the
Speaker 2: timeline timeline of the murders and could he have continued
Speaker 2: killing even while institutionalized. The other aspect here that has
Speaker 2: come to light is that, well Kuzminsky was a Polish Jew.
Speaker 2: There were some tensions in Whitechapel at the time. In fact,
Speaker 2: I think some of the police that were investigating this
Speaker 2: wrote in sort of the margins of a police report
Speaker 2: referring to Cosminsky as a dirty Jew, raising the question
Speaker 2: that maybe this the suspicion surrounding because Minsky may have
Speaker 2: been influenced by anti Semitic attitudes of the period.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad you brought that up. I am Jewish myself,
Speaker 3: and I guess not a lot changes over one hundred
Speaker 3: and thirty seven, one hundred and thirty eight years, because
Speaker 3: we see a big rise in anti Semitism today. But
Speaker 3: back then in eighteen eighty eight, obviously before World War
Speaker 3: One or World War two, but tensions were rising. It
Speaker 3: was a very poor, as I was saying, poor section
Speaker 3: of East London. The Jewish people were treated as scapegoats,
Speaker 3: and the media, you know, the media pretends to be objective.
Speaker 3: I was once a part of legacy media, but back
Speaker 3: then the media was also a little bit unhinged and
Speaker 3: they would print things as fact, even though a lot
Speaker 3: of what they were saying was xenophobic and anti Semitic.
Speaker 3: But newspapers wodspread rumors that the killer was likely Jewish
Speaker 3: or a foreigner. Again, there were a lot of people
Speaker 3: coming in from Ireland at that time, immigrating into into London.
Speaker 3: So again it could have been the power and influence
Speaker 3: of the media at the time that sort of drew
Speaker 3: people to think, Hey, maybe it's this Jewish guy Aaron Kasminsky,
Speaker 3: this Polish barber. Again, you know, this guy Russell Edwards,
Speaker 3: the British author and researcher. He is standing by his
Speaker 3: his findings, but not everybody is doing the same people.
Speaker 3: It was. His study was put out in the Journal
Speaker 3: of Forensic Sciences, and afterwards the publication came out and
Speaker 3: says said it had its own concerns because this guy,
Speaker 3: Russell Edwards, could not produce a lot of sort of
Speaker 3: the original data that he was basing this on, and
Speaker 3: he was kind of struggling with questions over the method
Speaker 3: dollar to use. So the scientific journalist said, hey, wait
Speaker 3: a minute, So they're questioning it, but she is not.
Speaker 2: And again, as you point out, the concern also is
Speaker 2: that the DNA evidence that was extracted from this silk
Speaker 2: shawl reportedly belonging to one of the victims, Catherine Edos.
Speaker 2: There's questions about the chain of custody. Was that, in fact,
Speaker 2: even found in a crime scene, did that shawl belong
Speaker 2: to Catherine Edos. I suppose what would be really handy
Speaker 2: to sort of help nail this case closed would be
Speaker 2: maybe a photograph of Catherine Edos wearing such a silk shawl.
Speaker 2: But you know, photography was just sort of in its
Speaker 2: infancy back then, so that would be a very rare fine.
Speaker 2: But I mean, that would really go a long way
Speaker 2: to nailing this shut, don't you think.
Speaker 3: Yeah? And you know, I'm sure they're looking for it
Speaker 3: and trying to find that. As far as I know,
Speaker 3: it has not been found. And again, this Journal of
Speaker 3: Forensic Sciences, where this this paper was essentially published saying
Speaker 3: it is a shawl belonging to Cathernetto's victim of Jack
Speaker 3: the Ripper, the publication itself is questioning it. And there
Speaker 3: is sort of like a fierce combative I don't want
Speaker 3: to say a competition, but these researchers and criminologists and
Speaker 3: people who study this study ripperology, they want to be
Speaker 3: the ones to say, hey, I've unmasked this one hundred
Speaker 3: and thirty seven hundred and thirty eight year old mystery
Speaker 3: and others this happens, you know, And I'm not a
Speaker 3: scientist and was never really part of that world, but
Speaker 3: I have friends who are. It's very competitive. People want
Speaker 3: to sort of win right. So there are other suspects
Speaker 3: out there. Other researchers are saying no, Russell Edwards is wrong.
Speaker 3: But he's gotten, to his credit, he's gotten family members
Speaker 3: from both sides, from Kozminski and from Catherine Edos to
Speaker 3: come forward and basically substantiate his findings, although they're not
Speaker 3: scientists and we're researchers, but are basically standing behind him saying, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is one hundred percent who it was. This is
Speaker 3: Jack the Ripper. But I can tell you I don't
Speaker 3: think the debate is over. But to your point, again,
Speaker 3: they are able to find a photo and pinpoint this
Speaker 3: silk shawl actually belongs to Katherine Edos and was also
Speaker 3: at the scene, which is gonna be tough to do.
Speaker 3: You know, cell phones aren't that old, Richard. It's gonna
Speaker 3: be it's gonna be a challenge still to solve this.
Speaker 2: Would he make of the claim that Aaron Kosminsky or
Speaker 2: whomever is Jack was Jack the Ripper may have had
Speaker 2: an accomplice. I mean, I've heard the rumblings about this.
Speaker 2: Is there any evidence that you've read or come across
Speaker 2: suggesting someone else was acting or was involved or to
Speaker 2: your mind, is it pretty well settled that Jack Ripper
Speaker 2: was acting alone.
Speaker 3: No heard the same thing as you have that you
Speaker 3: know that there are quote unquote co conspirators, but you know,
Speaker 3: you see that today. One of the cases that we
Speaker 3: obviously cover very closely here is the tragic and brutal
Speaker 3: murders of the four University of Idaho students, and the
Speaker 3: accused killer there is a guy named Brian coberg Or.
Speaker 3: In just last week, they came out and said that
Speaker 3: one of the victims has three different foreign forms of
Speaker 3: male DNA under her fingernails. Now, that comes from a
Speaker 3: lot of different things, But there are a lot of
Speaker 3: people who are into conspiracy theories and believe there's no
Speaker 3: way Brian coburg Or acted alone. And I think that
Speaker 3: plays to the same point as Jack the Ripper. People,
Speaker 3: you know, think that these acts, these gruesome murders, you
Speaker 3: know where he's disemboweling people just simply couldn't be carried
Speaker 3: out by one person, same way Brian koberg Er. People
Speaker 3: say there's no way he could have murdered four college
Speaker 3: kids basically in fifteen minutes and left without much of
Speaker 3: a crime scene behind him. There's had to be tons
Speaker 3: of blood, there was very little at the scene, none
Speaker 3: in his car. So all this sort of you know, uh,
Speaker 3: perpetuates these conspiracy theories. And while people say that Jack
Speaker 3: the Ripper had an accomplice, I think most people who
Speaker 3: really are into ripperology as it is known, I think
Speaker 3: most people who are really into it and dedicated to it,
Speaker 3: they believe that it was all perpetrated by one killer.
Speaker 2: Now maybe it's just me, but it seems like, I mean,
Speaker 2: we have now the newspapers filled with you know, mass
Speaker 2: killings and mass shootings unfortunately, but serial killers. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to remember the last sort of high profile
Speaker 2: serial killer. And you mentioned, of course, the BTK killer
Speaker 2: Dennis Rader, and his killing spree ran almost twenty years,
Speaker 2: but it ended around nineteen ninety one. And I'm trying
Speaker 2: to think, like the era, if we can use that
Speaker 2: term of the serial killer, it seems like we just
Speaker 2: don't hear a lot about them anymore. What do you
Speaker 2: suppose that is? I mean, does it have anything to
Speaker 2: do with hitchhiking? For example, hitchhikers were like common prey
Speaker 2: for serial killers. Nobody hitchhikes anymore. Do you think those
Speaker 2: that's related.
Speaker 3: These are great questions. I mean, I think the bottom
Speaker 3: line is, well, two things. There are definitely still serial
Speaker 3: killers out there among us. However, it is just becoming
Speaker 3: across the board. And this is a great thing. It's
Speaker 3: becoming so much harder to commit rhymes and get away
Speaker 3: with them. You know, there have been instances in the
Speaker 3: last couple of years of just men going missing in Austin,
Speaker 3: Texas and a lot of them found drowned, you know,
Speaker 3: in a lake there, so people suspect maybe there's a
Speaker 3: serial killer there. There's no question that there's people still
Speaker 3: actively committing these murders on a grand scale, but it
Speaker 3: is also becoming next to them possible to commit like
Speaker 3: the perfect murder. I mean, digital forensics is just advancing.
Speaker 3: It's such a rapid pace that if you're going to
Speaker 3: do something in this day and age, you're likely going
Speaker 3: to get caught. But if you go back, you know,
Speaker 3: like you said, the days of Ted Bundy or Ed
Speaker 3: Gean or these other guys, John Wayne Gacy, it was
Speaker 3: just a different time. You know, no cell phones, people
Speaker 3: weren't taking pictures of every single thingying. There wasn't social media. Now,
Speaker 3: if you're going to do something untoured. You're definitely you're
Speaker 3: definitely getting caught on a camera by someone somewhere somehow.
Speaker 3: And I think it's just much more difficult to perpetuate
Speaker 3: a series of murders than it was, you know, even
Speaker 3: a decade or two decades, definitely three decades ago.
Speaker 2: Right, everyone's submitting DNA voluntarily now to ancestry dot com
Speaker 2: and twenty what is it twenty three and me. So
Speaker 2: even if you have no prior record, no prior run
Speaker 2: ins with police where you haven't given fingerprints or DNA evidence,
Speaker 2: they just you know, if they suspect you, they go
Speaker 2: to a relative and they get their DNA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. I mean you'll see headlines if
Speaker 3: you look. I mean I'm looking more than most people
Speaker 3: because it's kind of the world I live in right now.
Speaker 3: But almost every day there's a company in Texas called
Speaker 3: as Ran. They do great work in terms of like
Speaker 3: DNA sequencing and tracing, and they're fine killers daily from
Speaker 3: like fifty you know, fifty sixty years ago. You know
Speaker 3: one serial killer who is fine Bars right now making
Speaker 3: a lot of headlines as the Long Island serial killer.
Speaker 3: The accused. There is a guy named Rex Sheuerman, who
Speaker 3: is said to have killed all these sex workers in
Speaker 3: Long Island. So and he was operating till fairly recently,
Speaker 3: but they believe, you know, he could be responsible upwards
Speaker 3: of forty or fifty possibly more murders. And they're still
Speaker 3: investigating that. And you know, they were just able to
Speaker 3: they were tracked him down through a pizza crust DNA
Speaker 3: on a pizza crust led investigators back to him.
Speaker 2: Do you believe we're finally getting close to solving the
Speaker 2: mystery of Jackie Ripper with the identification of Aaron Kasminsky
Speaker 2: or do you think this case is going to remain
Speaker 2: unsolved with more questions than answers.
Speaker 3: Great question and for complete transparency. I honestly don't know.
Speaker 3: My gut tells me. My gut tells me that it
Speaker 3: is not this guy kauz Minsky. He doesn't exactly fit
Speaker 3: the bill. It'd be fascinating, Richard, for you to get
Speaker 3: a criminal profile or on maybe and I could suggest
Speaker 3: some to you to kind of look at his background
Speaker 3: much more extensively. It's an entire science onto itself. But
Speaker 3: there are other big name suspects. I don't think they're
Speaker 3: gonna be able to go off of the kind of
Speaker 3: degraded DNA from one hundred and thirty seven years ago,
Speaker 3: not to mention the fact that they're not one hundred
Speaker 3: percent certain that that even belonged to Katherine Edos or
Speaker 3: was even at the crime scene. But it makes for
Speaker 3: amazing headlines. It obviously stirs up the conversation again. It
Speaker 3: also energizes the other ripperologists who are studying this. I
Speaker 3: think eventually we're gonna get a name that more people
Speaker 3: agree upon, and there will be some sort of consensus. The
Speaker 3: science now is just too good. The question, of course,
Speaker 3: is if they can get material that's strong enough from
Speaker 3: that many years back.
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