Those of us who enjoy reading serial killer trivia on Wikipedia late at night are obsessing this week over news that someone has identified Jack the Ripper from DNA. A book about this is coming out tomorrow, which I have not read. And yet... that story sound fishy (and also, familiar) to anyone else?

An amateur historian named Russell Edwards says he has a shawl taken from the scene of one of the murders, that of 46-year-old Catherine Eddowes. He bought it at auction in 2007. The story was that a policeman lifted it for his wife, the wife was understandably creeped out, and the shawl remained in closeted purgatory until it resurfaced and began to circulate in Ripperologist-land in 1991. Edwards seems aware there is something fishy about the shawl's origin story:

I reasoned that it made no sense for Eddowes to have owned the expensive shawl herself; this was a woman so poor she had pawned her shoes the day before her murder. But could the Ripper have brought the shawl with him and left it as an obscure clue about when he was planning to strike next? It was just a hunch, and far from proof of anything, but it set me off on my journey.

So Edwards went out and hired an expert in molecular biology who used "pioneering techniques" to discover that the shawl had DNA on it. Some of this DNA, the scientist says, matches perfectly with Eddowes' descendants. Other bits match perfectly with a descendant of one of the Ripper suspects, a 23-year-old named Aaron Kosminski.

Kosminski is not exactly unknown to "Ripperologists." He has long been a leading suspect, which is why Edwards looked for a descendant. He was a hairdresser (shades of Sweeney Todd), a prolific self-abuser (i.e. masturbator), and he was eventually committed to an insane asylum.

And yet: Catherine Eddowes died in September 1888. That means, taking all elements of this story for granted, the shawl was wandering around someone's closet for over 100 years. The chain of custody isn't exactly clean. It seems unlikely Edwards will ever be able to clear that end of the matter up. And we haven't even gotten to the matter of ruling out Kosminski as a copycat of the "true" Ripper.

All of which will keep the wheels of this "investigation" turning, I suspect.

After all, trolling about Jack the Ripper's identity is a long and proud tradition. It was going on from the time the story broke. See, e.g., from an 1888 issue of the New York Times:

It wasn't him. Nor was this, from an 1888 edition of the Washington Post:

Hindsight didn't help much either, even in 1910 articles headlined like this one from the Observer didn't shed much more light:

A 1959 edition of Newsday asked:

But it wasn't. By 1970 the theories had extended to royalty:

And by 1972 to "abortionists":

And let's not forget that time, in 1993, when someone came up with a diary:

This is good news for the Ripper obsessed, and also for book publishers because, as the Times of India put it a few years back:

Best of luck to everyone cashing in on this round.