Jack the Ripper Suspect – Aaron Kosminski

Kosminski (or Kozminski) was a Polish Jew who was confined to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in 1891.

He was named as a suspect by Melville Macnaughten in his 1894 memorandum, and by former Chief Inspector Donald Swanson in handwritten comments in the margin of his copy of Assistant Commissioner Sir Robert Anderson’s memoirs.

Anderson wrote that a Polish Jew had been identified as the Ripper but that no prosecution was possible because the witness was also Jewish and refused to testify against a fellow Jew.

Some Ripperologists are skeptical of this, while others use it in their own theories.

In his memorandum, Macnaughten stated that no one was ever identified as the Ripper, which directly contradicts Anderson’s recollection.

Kosminski lived in Whitechapel, however, he was largely harmless in the asylum. His insanity took the form of auditory hallucinations, a paranoid fear of being fed by other people, and a refusal to wash or bathe.

In his book, The Cases That Haunt Us, former FBI profiler John Douglas states that a paranoid individual such as Kosminski would likely have openly boasted of the murders while incarcerated had he been the killer, but there is no record that he ever did so.

Conclusion: it is possible that Aaron Mordke Kosminski was Jack the Ripper.