Jack the Ripper: 'Case closed after 125 years'

When I read that Jack the Ripper had finally been identified, I thought: "Here we go again."

Who was the serial killer going to be this time? Gladstone? WG Grace?

After all, the list of suspects contains the likes of Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, and even Lewis Carroll, so I was bracing myself for somebody really spectacularly silly; perhaps even Queen Victoria herself.

But as I read more it became apparent that this wasn't some outlandish claim peddled by a money-grabbing junk historian.

In fact, it all seems very sensible. In 2007, a businessman called Russell Edwards bought a shawl that was said to have belonged to Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper's victims. Edwards took the shawl to Dr Jari Louhelainen, a senior UK lecturer in molecular biology and a specialist in genetics and forensic science.

Louhelainen was able to extract enough DNA from bloodstains on the shawl to get a match with DNA taken from one of Eddowes's descendants - and he also found some seminal fluid, from which he was also able to extract DNA.

That DNA from the semen is a 100% match with that of a female descendant of the sister of one of the Ripper suspects - a Polish-born hairdresser called Aaron Kosminski.

Kosminski was a paranoid schizophrenic subject to hallucinations and was incarcerated in mental asylums from 1891 until he died in 1919.

If the science is correct, then the case is closed after nearly 125 years. And even though I'm a historian who delights in debunking junk history, this time I'm convinced. But I'm also disappointed.

Unlike so many of the suspects, Kosminski is boringly plausible. The idea that the Ripper was a madman who was strongly suspected by the police rings true, but dully true.

Although my head realises that Kosminski has to be the killer, my heart doesn't want the case to end. Like others, I've been fascinated not only by the case itself, but also by the legion of obsessive people who call themselves "Ripperologists".

Be in no doubt that these people will keep the case alive. The notion that there is nothing left to solve, no more leads to follow up, no more evidence to dissect, will leave their lives empty and seemingly worthless. One can already see anguished signs of this denial on discussion forums, in which the Edwards-Louhelainen theory is peevishly dismissed.

Among those who will doubtless be rubbishing the idea of Kosminski as the serial killer will be the crime writer Patricia Cornwell, who is the queen of Ripperology. In 2002, she published a book in which she confidently asserted that the painter Walter Sickert was the Ripper. Her identification was partly based on her observation that the poses of women in some of the artist's paintings were similar to those of the corpses of Ripper victims.

Cornwell's problem, which is shared by many of her fellow Ripperologists - and, to be honest, by me - is that she wanted the murderer to be someone remarkable. That such unsolved sensational murders were committed by an obscure maniac is simply not satisfying.

Kosminski's modest character does not have sufficient strength to carry the hugeness of the story and the culture of books, films, TV shows and tours that has been built around it.

The truth is that the answers to so many of these notorious cases are boring and short, but subconsciously we treat these horrible, true crimes as extensions of the entertainment industry.

Even if the DNA evidence had shown that the Ripper was, say, a son of Queen Victoria, many would have dismissed it.

Mysteries are fun. Solved mysteries are not. Alas, we must learn to accept the science, and not let our imagination triumph over the facts.

But if Dr Louhelainen's methodology is found to be flawed, then I for one will be secretly delighted.