Researchers now say that they have proven the authenticity of a Victorian diary supposedly written by the notorious murderer 
 
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 THE identity of Jack The Ripper may have finally been confirmed, new evidence suggests. 
 
 Researchers now say that they have proven the authenticity of a much-disputed Victorian diary supposedly written by the notorious murderer. 
 
 Getty - Contributor James Maybrick, the cotton merchant suspected of being Jack The Ripper 
 
 Previously, doubt had been cast on the legitimacy of a diary published 25 years ago by a cotton merchant from Liverpool who was called James Maybrick. 
 
 Mike Barrett, who made the diary public, also died before he could properly explain the origin of the memoir – which led many to believe that the diary could be a forgery. 
 
 However, a team of experts, led by film maker Bruce Robinson, now say that they have evidence to suggest that the diary is genuine and does indeed describe the infamous murders. 
 
 According to a new book, the diary was discovered in Maybrick's former Liverpool home - putting him back in the frame as the Victorian serial killer. 
 
 James Maybrick died in 1889, a year after the Whitechapel murders and, in 1992, a team of electrical contractors renovated Maybrick's former property, known as Battlecrease House. 
 
 New evidence includes timesheets that prove workers were at the house on March 9 1992 – the same day that Mike Barrett told a London literary agent that he had Jack The Ripper's diary. 
 
 Rex Features The diary which experts now say they think proves Jack The Ripper's true identity 
 
 Robert Smith, who published the original diary in 1993, told the Telegraph that, because Barrett had boasted about being an author when workers found the diary, the workers thought that he could help them sell it on to a publisher. 
 
 Robert Smith added: "The truth was that Barrett's only significant literary achievement was to write occasional puzzles for the weekly TV children's magazine, Look-In. 
 
 "Barrett had a highly impetuous nature. Just seeing or being told about the signature at the end of the diary would have been enough for him to reach for the phone. 
 
 “He was not very literate and the idea that he would have been capable of producing such a sophisticated and credible forgery is not remotely plausible.” 
 
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 Three years later, Barrett said that he had made everything up - but he later retracted his confession. 
 
 The workers later denied any involvement in the discovery – but none of their stories matched. 
 
 Many critics resolved that the diary was a fabrication put together from news reports at the time, while others reckoned that only the real Jack The Ripper could have known the details the diary is said to reveal. 
 
 Hulton Archive - Getty New evidence seems to confirm that Liverpool cotton merchant, James Maybrick was indeed Jack the Ripper 
 
 Adamant that the diary is the real deal, Smith said: “The new and indisputable evidence, that on March 9 1992, the diary was removed from under the floorboards of the room that had been James Maybrick's bedroom in 1889, and offered later on the very same day to a London literary agent, overrides any other considerations regarding its authenticity. 
 
 "It follows that James Maybrick is its most likely author. Was he Jack the Ripper? He now has to be a prime suspect, but the disputes over the Ripper's identity may well rage for another century at least". 
 
 A limited edition of 25 Years of The Diary of Jack The Ripper: The True Facts by Robert Smith is available from www.mangobooks.co.uk from September 4. ||||| Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email 
 
 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. 
 
 Mr 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. 
 
 "Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt. This is it now - we have unmasked him." 
 
 (Image: Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) 
 
 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. 
 
 Mr Edwards, 48, from Barnet, north London, was "captivated" by the murder mystery and had been investigating it in his spare time, but had come to the conclusion it could never be solved. 
 
 But then in 2007 he saw a shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper's victims, was up for sale. 
 
 He bought it, and 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. 
 
 He said: "Here I am with the shawl and possibly the evidence to solve the most unsolvable murder in English criminal history. But where do I start? That was the big question. 
 
 "I enlisted the help of Jari and we embarked on a three-and-a-half year journey. 
 
 "When we discovered the truth it was the most amazing feeling of my entire life." 
 
 Mr Edwards said the discovery 126 years after the murders proves beyond doubt that Kosminski - one of the six key suspects commonly cited as the Ripper - was the actual killer. 
 
 He said the shawl had been taken by acting Sergeant Amos Simpson, who was on duty the night of Eddowes's death and wanted it for his wife. 
 
 But horrified at the blood-soaked wrap, she never wore it, and it was stored away and passed down through the generations until it came to auction seven years ago. 
 
 Mr Edwards said: "Thank God the shawl has never been washed, as it held the vital evidence." 
 
 The author, who said he was part-inspired to take up the search for the killer after watching the Johnny Depp film From Hell about the Ripper murders, said police had identified Kosminski as a suspect, but never had enough evidence to bring him to trial. 
 
 Kosminski was a Polish Jewish immigrant who, fleeing persecution in his Russia-controlled homeland, came with his family to England in 1881 and lived in Mile End Old Town. 
 
 He was admitted to a string of lunatic asylums, where he died in 1899 of gangrene in the leg. 
 
 Naming Jack the Ripper will be published by Sidgwick & Jackson on Tuesday and costs £16.99 for a hardback.
– In 1992, a 9,000-word diary was found in the floorboards of a home in England containing a detailed confession to murders tied to Jack the Ripper, the serial killer who terrorized London for 10 weeks in 1888. It ended thusly: "I give my name that all know of me, so history do tell, what love can do to a gentleman born. Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper." It appears to belong to wealthy Liverpool cotton Merchant James Maybrick, who died a year later, but many experts dismissed the tell-all tome as a sophisticated forgery. Now, the Telegraph reports, a team led by writer and film director Bruce Robinson has unearthed timecards that show which electricians were working on Maybrick's home, Battlecrease House, on March 9, 1992, the morning the book was said to have been found. The man who came up with the diary, scrap metal dealer Mike Barrett, claimed to have gotten it through a family friend who died soon thereafter, leading many to believe it was a fake. But Barrett was a colorful character who frequented the Saddle Inn public house in Anfield, where one of the electricians working on Battlecrease House was also a regular. Because Barrett fancied himself a writer, it is believed that the electricians who found the book passed it onto Barrett, who then famously contacted a London literary agent that very day in March claiming he had Jack the Ripper's diary, adds the Sun. Mental Floss notes that many suspects have been proposed over the decades, including a former royal obstetrician. (The Ripper's last known victim remains mysterious.)