Jack the Ripper unmasked

The true identity of notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper can now be revealed thanks to a DNA breakthrough, it has been claimed.

Author and self confessed "armchair detective" Russell Edwards claims to have solved perhaps the most notorious whodunit ever.

Edwards claims Aaron Kosminski, a 23 year-old Polish immigrant who ended up dying in an asylum, was "definitely, categorically and absolutely" the man behind the grisly killing spree in 1888 in London's East End.

He said a blood-stained shawl he bought in 2007 after an auction in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, held vital DNA evidence which led him to the killer.

"I've got the only piece of forensic evidence in the whole history of the case. I've spent 14 years working on it, and we have definitively solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was," he said.

Jack the Ripper murdered at least five women, slashing their throats, removing some of their internal organs and leaving their mutilated bodied in Whitechapel's darkened alleyways.

In 2007 Edwards saw a shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper's victims, was up for sale and bought it. He then enlisted the help of Jari Louhelainen, an expert in molecular biology, who used pioneering techniques to find DNA from her blood and that of the killer.