On 13 November, Britons woke to the excellent news that one of the country’s most notorious serial killers was dead.
Peter Sutcliffe died on Friday, 13 November after contracting COVID-19. He refused treatment, literally signing his life away. He died alone; no one was at his bedside.
One less lifer at HMP (Her Majesty’s Prison) Frankland.
Sutcliffe was at risk for contracting the virus as an elderly and obese diabetic.
Well, if anyone had to die of it…
Peter Sutcliffe murdered at least thirteen women and attempted to kill at least seven more, cynically preying on sex workers, vulnerable as they are, well aware that many would not think twice about getting into a car with a strange man.
Peter William Sutcliffe was born 2 June 1946 in Bingley in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Leaving school at fifteen, he took one poorly paid job after another, including two stints as a gravedigger.
A fellow worker noticed that Sutcliffe routinely stole took jewellery and articles of clothing from the corpses. On one memorable occasion, he threw a stone at an open coffin, laughing: ‘It’ll wake them up!’.
There were even whispers of necrophilia.
By this time, Sutcliffe was obsessed with sex workers. He’d started spying on sex workers at fifteen. His domineering father John was outwardly prurient, so perhaps this fixation was a secret act of rebellion. Sutcliffe, the youngest of six, always worried that he fell far short of his father’s expectations. And given the fact that he adored his mother, he must have deeply resented how badly his father treated her.
Sutcliffe watched his father grope his brothers’ girlfriends, the reason he permitted sleepovers under his roof once the boys started dating.
Meanwhile, Kathleen Sutcliffe put up and shut up. But when Sutcliffe was in his early twenties, she found the courage to embark upon an affair with a policeman.
John Sutcliffe found out and went spare, venting to Peter, who still lived at home. Then he devised a plan for revenge, booking a room in a hotel, arranging matters so Kathleen would think she’d be meeting her lover. She went to the hotel and up to the room and knocked. John Sutcliffe opened the door. Worse, Peter was standing behind him.
Sutcliffe had a pronounced Madonna/whore complex and this traumatic incident didn’t help matters.
1969
At twenty-three, Sutcliffe had a girlfriend he’d been courting for two years. He saw Sonia every Saturday night and having a possessive nature, was outraged when he learned that she was two-timing him. Rather than confronting her, Sutcliffe decided to go to the red light district and solicit a sex worker. It was a bizarre idea of revenge, sleeping with a sex worker behind your girlfriend’s back.
The woman he approached asked for five pounds. Sutcliffe gave her ten, assuming he would receive his change later on. Nothing happened; Sutcliffe may not have been able to perform. As he was leaving, he asked for his money. But the woman had protectors who intervened, telling him in no uncertain terms to be on his way.
Three weeks later, he asked his friend Trevor Birdsall to drive him through the red-light district, looking for the woman who had cheated him. Spotting her, he asked Birdsall to pull over. Sutcliffe was gone for ten minutes; when he returned, he was noticeably out of breath and clearly anxious, urging Birdsall to drive away.
Sutcliffe said he’s going to sue the woman but ended up attacking another sex worker instead, hitting her over the head with a sock loaded with a stone. Worried that the ‘old cow’ would go to the police, Sutcliffe shook the sock out the passenger side window.
And so she did, having memorising the number plate.
The police paid Birdsall a visit. Panic-stricken, he told them everything he knew.
Then the police went to see Sutcliffe. He received a stern lecture, but nothing more, because the woman declined to press charges. She may have worried that as a known sex worker that she would not be believed in court. And despite reporting the incident, she may have be wary of them, with a common-law husband in prison for assault.
The police told Sutcliffe he was very lucky.
His luck gave out just weeks later.
Sutcliffe was found by police in Manningham (Bradford) on 29 September hiding behind a hedge with a hammer. Having no idea he’d gone there to solicit a sex worker and kill her, the police mistook him for a burglar. He was fined twenty-five pounds.
The police never found the long-bladed knife he dropped down a gap in the police van, the first time Sutcliffe would hide a weapon under their noses, but not the last.
1975
Sutcliffe was advised to go to Keighley in Bradford by his fellow workers on the night shift at Britannia Works of Anderton International as there were plenty of sex workers there. Sutcliffe and Sonia had been married for a year, but his obsession with sex workers continued unabated.
He spotted Anna Rogulskyj in Keighley.
Sutcliffe boldly approached her asking if he could go home with her for a cuppa. She refused. Not only was his request bizarre, this man was wild-eyed; something was clearly very wrong. Anna quickly walked away. Alarmed when she realised Sutcliffe was following her, she made an effort to lose him.
Several weeks later, he followed Anna straight into a coffee bar. Frightened, she refused to have coffee with him and was about to make a fuss when he bolted.
On Saturday, 5 July at about 1:00 a.m., Anna was in North Queen Street on her way to see her boyfriend. A man in a darkened doorway asked if she ‘fancied it’. ‘Not on your life’, she replied, continuing on her way, but walking double time now.
Anna arrived at her boyfriend’s house, but could not awaken him. Frustrated and emotional and drunk, she threw a shoe through a ground floor window before walking home.
Then she heard the voice ask again if she ‘fancied it’. For the second time, Anna said no.
Then she heard someone running behind her.
Sutcliffe rushed towards her from behind; an alert Anna elbowed him. Undaunted, he hit her three times over the head with a ball peen hammer before she collapsed. Whilst unconscious, Sutcliffe pulled her blouse up and slashed her abdomen with a knife; only a neighbour calling out into the night prevented a stabbing frenzy. He ran off, the neighbour went back to sleep and Anna lay unconscious, bleeding onto the pavement for almost an hour before she was found. Miraculously, she survived, but was so badly injured that she was given the last rites. A twelve-hour-long operation to remove splinters of bone from her brain saved her life.
The encounter taught Sutcliffe the value of approaching lone women from behind.
In August, he ambushed forty-six-year old office cleaner Olive Smelt in Halifax.
Olive was on her way home, dropped off by a friend after an evening out. Sutcliffe came near, close enough for her to hear him ask: ‘Weather’s letting us down, isn’t it?’
Olive politely replied in the affirmative.
The next thing she knew, she was in hospital, her head swathed in bandages. She was not expected to survive. Sutcliffe had hit her over the head so ferociously that her skull ‘was like a crushed coconut shell’ as she recalled many years later. Years later, Sutcliffe admitted he intended to kill Olive and would have had he not been caught in the headlights of a passing car.
She told the police that the man had thick black hair and a Yorkshire accent. But they refused to believe he was from Yorkshire; it took two years to realise that she was correct. This upset her. ‘If they had taken me seriously, I believe he could have been caught earlier.’
Later that month, Sutcliffe attacked fourteen-year-old Tracy Browne in Silsden. Once again, he was scared off by a passing car. Tracy had brain surgery and survived, never knowing who attacked her until 1992, when Sutcliffe finally confessed.
On Thursday, 30 October, he was on the prowl again, this time in Leeds.
Wilma McCann was 28, born in Scotland. Life in Leeds was hard with four children, no education to speak of and no skills. It was difficult to make ends meet and Wilma drifted into sex work.
That evening, Wilma said goodnight to her children before going went out. Drifting from pub to pub, she downed between twelve and fourteen measures of spirits. After leaving the last pub at 10:30 p.m. (closing time during the week), witnesses saw her with a portion of chips (French fries) in her hand in the road, weaving in and out of traffic. A concerned lorry driver was about to give her a lift, but changed his mind after Wilma began hurling abuse.
(What follows is Sutcliffe’s version of events; please bear this in mind.)
Sutcliffe, seeing a vulnerable woman, hastily pulled over and told her to jump in. Once seated, she said she lived nearby before thanking for stopping. According to him, they chatted amiably (rather difficult to believe since a witness described her as ‘incoherent’) until Wilma asked if he ‘want[ed] business’. Sutcliffe later told police he didn’t know what that meant. ‘I asked her to explain and straight away a scornful tone came into her voice, which took me by surprise because she had been so pleasant.’ According to him, Wilma retorted: ‘Bloody hell, do I have to spell it out?’
He parked 100 yards away from her house, where her children were fast asleep. According to him, Wilma was impatient, demanding: ‘Well, what are we waiting for? ‘Let’s get on with it.’. She asked for five pounds. Sutcliffe was annoyed. He was in no hurry. On the contrary, he needed time to warm up. By now, Wilma was absolutely furious. Getting out of the car, she slammed the door and shouted ‘I’m going, it’s going to take you all fucking day!’ Then she ‘said something like “You’re fucking useless”‘.
This set him off. Now he was ‘seething with rage’ and admittedly longed to hit Wilma.
One suspects Sutcliffe was incapable of performing with women and Wilma’s remark served as a reminder.
According to his version of events, he responded with: ‘Hang on a minute, don’t go off like that’. There wasn’t much room in the car; perhaps he they ought to go to the playing fields. Wilma, still in a foul mood, stomped up the hill. Sutcliffe followed. He spread his coat on the grass. She sat down, then ‘…unfastened her trousers. She said: ‘Come on then, get it over with.’
‘Don’t worry, I will.’
‘After that first time, I developed and played up a hatred for prostitutes in order to justify within myself a reason why I had attacked and killed Wilma McCann.’
1976
Sutcliffe struck again the following winter in Leeds.
Emily and Sydney Jackson were a middle-aged couple and the parents of three children. Caught in a financial bind, they agreed that Emily would take on sex work part-time, using the van Sydney used as a roofing contractor. Oddly, he did not drive: Emily drove him to work and made herself very helpful to her husband in other ways, including keeping his paperwork straight. Sydney appears to have taken his wife for granted; the couple went to a pub nightly and while he sat inside drinking, oh, Emily stood outside the pub waiting for a client, no matter how inclement the weather.
Sutcliffe noticed her outside the Gaiety pub in Roundhay Road on Tuesday, 20 January. The idea of warming herself in a car must have been very tempting, so tempting that Emily jumped in.
Sutcliffe drove to a site he’d clearly chosen in advance, a derelict building on an industrial estate. It was about half past seven on a winter’s evening in the north of England and Enfield Street seemed completely abandoned.
Sutcliffe stopped the car and within seconds, hit Emily over the head with a hammer. Unconscious, he dragged her into a rubbish-strewn yard and unbuttoned her coat before pulling up her blouse and brassiere to expose her breasts. Then he raised her skirt and stabbed her fifty-two times in the neck, the chest, the abdomen and the back with a Phillips screwdriver. Rummaging through the yard, Sutcliffe came across a piece of wood two to three feet long. The police found it rammed up between her legs.
He’d left a clue: an impression of his Wellington boot on Emily’s thigh. (Years later in California, Richard Ramirez, the notorious Night Stalker, similarly left an impression of his shoe on a victim’s face, an act of brutality that shocked seasoned detectives.)
Sydney emerged from the pub at ten-thirty. Looking for Emily, he walked to the van. Assuming she was with a client, he hailed a taxi and went home.
Sutcliffe went back to Leeds four months later.
Marcella Claxton was twenty and four months pregnant, walking home alone from a party on Sunday 9 May at 4:00 am. Despite her pregnancy, Marcella had been drinking heavily. Sutcliffe must have noticed, because he pulled over. Marcella asked for a lift.
What happened next is not certain; Marcella denies soliciting that morning. Sutcliffe said she agreed to go to Soldier’s Field in Roundhay Park for sex and asked for five pounds. Marcella says she never said any such thing. What is certain is that he drove to the Field; both Marcella and Sutcliffe agreed that she went behind ‘some trees to relieve herself, Sutcliffe adding that she assured him they would ‘start the ball rolling on the grass’.
Then he accidentally dropped his hammer.
Marcella, after hearing the thud, called out: ‘I hope that isn’t a knife.’ Sutcliffe replied that he’d dropped his wallet.
He struck from behind as he always did, hitting Marcella eight or nine times over the head with his ball peen hammer. Remarkably, she did not lose consciousness and witnessed Sutcliffe masturbating a few feet away before thrusting a five pound note in her hand, warning her not to go to the police.
She waited until he drove off. Staggering in agony and covered in blood, Marcella went to the nearest phone box and stepped inside.
Then, in a scene worthy of a horror film, she saw Sutcliffe driving back, clearly looking for her. Marcella realised he’d thought better of letting her live and was coming back ‘to finish me off’.
What made her situation all the more terrifying was the knowledge that she could not run away, weak as she was from blood loss. But weakness forced Marcella to sink to the cement floor of the phone box; she was well out of sight.
Fifty-two stitches were required to suture her wounds. She underwent brain surgery. And Marcella lost her baby. But her memory was intact. Marcella gave police a description of a bearded man with ‘crinkly’ black hair and a Yorkshire accent who drove a white car with red upholstery.
1977
Sutcliffe waited until Saturday, 5 February 1977 to attack another woman in Leeds.
Irene Richardson, 28, was down on her luck. Once a chambermaid, she was unemployed. She had one child, a son that she gave up for adoption seven years earlier. The last ten days had been particularly bad and Irene was desperate for money.
She was waiting for a client outside the Gaiety pub that evening, standing exactly where Emily Jackson stood a year earlier.
At half past eleven, Sutcliffe caught her attention. Irene cheerfully hopped in and after promising to ‘show him a good time’, poignantly asked: ‘You are not going to send me away, are you?’
No, he had no intention of sending her away.
Sutcliffe drove down Roundhay Road to Roundhay Park, continuing on to Soldier’s Field, where he killed Wilma McCann and very nearly ended Marcella Claxton’s life. Irene needed to urinate, settling for the grass after finding the lavatories locked.
Irene Richardson never had a chance.
The following morning, a jogger, startled to see a woman lying face down on the Field cold to her asking her if she was all right. When she did not reply, he went to her. Brushing her blood-soaked hair back from her face, he saw glazed-over eyes and a rivulet of blood on her neck.
Sutcliffe left another clue by stupidly parking his car on the grass. If only the police had grasped how thoroughly he enjoyed murdering sex workers.
‘[It was] an obsession with me and I couldn’t stop myself, it was like some sort of drug.’
Sutcliffe kept up with himself in the press and decided the next time he killed a sex worker it would be in Manningham, in Bradford.
Patricia Atkinson was in her early thirties. Preferring to call herself Tina, she had a habit of self-medicating with alcohol. On Saturday, 23 April, Tina went on a solitary pub crawl, getting so drunk that an exasperated pub manager threw her out. Frustrated and utterly miserable, she was pounding the roof of a car and shouting obscenities when Sutcliffe saw her. Delighted to be offered a ride, she fairly leapt in the car, quick to tell the driver that her flat was nearby. Well aware that a man was murdering sex workers in the north of England, Tina thought it would be safer to take clients home.
She died around a quarter past eleven.
Once again, Sutcliffe left a clue, a bloody boot print on the bedclothes that linked this latest murder to that of Emily Jackson.
Sutcliffe returned to Leeds early the morning of 26 June.
Hours later, two children found sixteen-year-old Jayne McDonald face down in an adventure playground. She was not far from home; by a morbid coincidence, Jayne was a neighbour of the McCanns. A school leaver, she was a shop assistant, but since Sutcliffe watched her walk through a red light district, he assumed she was a sex worker.
The police turned the body over and saw a broken glass bottle embedded in her chest, a desecration Sutcliffe would refuse to take responsibility for, insisting it happened when he dragged Jayne to the playground from the road.
The burden of identification fell on her father. He died two years later, of a broken heart.
1977-80
The West Yorkshire Police failed to go on television and appeal to the public on television until after building society clerk Josephine Whitaker was murdered on 4 April. The Yorkshire Ripper – as the tabloid press called him – had gone too far this time, choosing a victim who was not a sex worker for the second time. Chief Superintendent Jim Hobson of West Yorkshire police made his views on the matter all too clear:
‘He [Sutcliffe] has made it clear that he hates prostitutes.’ Hobson remarked, continuing with: ‘Many people do. We, as a police force will continue to arrest prostitutes. But the Ripper is now killing innocent girls.’
Feminists were outraged. There were protests complete with placards reading: ‘Prostitutes are innocent, OK?’ But changing deeply ingrained attitudes was an uphill battle.
Nineteen-year-old Josephine Whitaker had lived in Halifax and went to see her grandparents the evening of 4 April, delightedly showing off the new silver watch she’d bought. They asked her to stay the night, but with her contact lens case and solution at home, Josephine turned the request down.
It was eleven-forty. Sutcliffe had been drinking with Trevor Birdsall; they parted after closing time, Sutcliffe stressing that he had to go home. But he went in the opposite direction, in search of a victim.
Within minutes, he spotted Josephine walking alone.
Sutcliffe claimed he felt guilty after murdering Josephine and Jayne before her because neither was a sex worker. But he chatted with Josephine before killing her and admitted that she said she was walking home from her grandparents, adding that it was a long walk. Sutcliffe knew perfectly well that Josephine was not a sex worker.
In my opinion, Sutcliffe was less interested in murdering sex workers than murdering vulnerable women.
Returning briefly to the attitudes held by West Yorkshire Police at the time, it would be unfair not to mention that the present Chief Constable issued an apology immediately after Sutcliffe died, regretting ‘the language, tone and terminology used by senior officers at the time.’.
John Robins continued with: ‘Such language and attitudes may have reflected wider societal attitudes of the day, but it was as wrong then as it is now.’
With all due respect to Mr. Robins, that was a day late and a dollar short.
As Sutcliffe continued to murder, the press taunted West Yorkshire Police; one observation quickly became infamous: ‘Ripper 10, police nil.’ Sutcliffe was one of the most prolific serial killers in British history by the spring of 1979. Four more women lost their lives after Jayne McDonald was murdered and before Josephine Whitaker’s body was found.
– Jean Jordan, 21. Murdered in Manchester on 1 October 1977.
– Yvonne Pearson, 22. Murdered in Bradford on 21 January 1978.
– Helen Rytka, 18. Murdered in Huddersfield on 31 January 1978.
– Vera Millward, 40. Murdered in Manchester on 16 May 1978.
And there would have been two more victims in that space of time if Maureen Long and Marilyn Moore hadn’t survived.
Sutcliffe attacked Maureen in Bradford on 10 July 1977, leaving her for dead as he drove away. Maureen was forty-two, a sex worker who lived in Leeds but had gone to Bradford on 9 July for a night on the town. Worse for the wear, she accepted the lift Sutcliffe offered her, asking if he ‘fancied’ her.
‘Yes’, he replied.
She was found the following morning on a stretch of waste ground, barely alive, hit over the head with a hammer and stabbed and left exposed. Maureen survived, but could not accurately describe the man who attacked her.
Sutcliffe panicked after reading in the newspaper that Maureen was alive and got rid of the hammer, tossing it over a wall. A groundskeeper found it and used it for the next three years, having no idea what it was used for.
He went to Leeds on 14 December 1977. This time he was prepared, having chosen twenty-five-year-old Marilyn Moore as his next victim in advance. He casually dropped the names of two fellow sex workers, mentioning one had a Jamaican boyfriend, so Marilyn would drop her guard and get into his car.
They were about 200 yards away from where Wilma McCann died when Sutcliffe suddenly began calling Marilyn names. Then he hit her in the head with a hammer. Marilyn knew how important it was to protect her head, so raised her arms. And she screamed, hoping to attract attention. A dog barked in the distance, unnerving Sutcliffe enough to shove Marilyn out of the car and drive off as quickly as he could.
Marilyn was not only observant, but had an excellent memory. Thanks to her, the police had their first accurate description of the Yorkshire Ripper: dark curly hair, dark eyes, height about 5’6″. (The only mistake she made was to say he had a Liverpool accent.) The photo fit based on the information she provided was astonishingly accurate and anyone who knew Sutcliffe would have known he was the Yorkshire Ripper.
But his old friend Trevor Birdsall failed come forward until November 1980. Had he done the right thing in the summer of 1979 at the latest, he might have saved the lives of three women:
– Barbara Leach, 20, a student at Bradford University. She died on 1 September 1979.
– Marguerite Walls, 47. A civil servant, she died on 20 August 1980 in Leeds.
– Jacqueline Hill, 20, a student at Leeds University, murdered on 17 November 1980.
Along the way, Sutcliffe attacked three other women who survived.
Birdsall revealed what he thought he knew in an anonymous note sent to police only in the hope of receiving a £50,000 reward. Maddeningly, the note was literally lost in the shuffle, thrust into a file and forgotten. But then again, West Yorkshire Police mishandled the case full stop; Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield should never have been placed in charge. Oldfield fell hook, line and sinker for letters and a tape sent by a hoaxer soon nicknamed Wearside Jack. The tape convinced Oldfield that the Ripper was a Geordie – from Newcastle – living and working in Bradford. FBI profiler Robert Ressler (who inspired the Netflix series Mindhunter) heard the tape and and knew immediately that Wearside Jack was a hoaxer. But Oldfield had made up his mind. Even after Sutcliffe was arrested, Oldfield remained convinced that the letters and tape had been sent by the Ripper.
Oldfield had a heart attack in August 1979. The official reason for his four-month long absence was a chest infection. He returned to work, but was no longer in charge of the Ripper case.
On 2 January 1980, a policeman showing a rookie the ropes in Broomhill, Sheffield (South Yorkshire) saw a couple sitting in a car in a driveway in Melbourne Avenue. It was late, and it was a red-light district. The police went over to investigate.
Sutcliffe told police his name was John Williams when the older policeman asked what who the girl was, stop Cliff replied that she was his girlfriend when asked what her name was he said he hadn’t known her that long angering his interlocutor. ‘Do you think I just fell off a Christmas tree?’ he retorted.
Meanwhile, the rookie checked the number plates and discovered they were false, meant to be on a car registered to a man with a Pakistani surname. Ordered out of his car, Sutcliffe complied before announcing he needed to urinate. Watching him wander slightly off course, Sergeant Robert Ring asked where he was going. Sutcliffe ignored the question, complaining he was ‘bursting for a pee’. Annoyed, Sergeant waved him towards a wall.
Observant police officers at the station house noticed that he matched the description of the Ripper, including the gap in his front teeth, having bitten two of his murder victims A blood test revealed that Sutcliffe and the Ripper shared the same blood group, B. This was rare in Britain at the time, applying to just 6% of the population.
South Yorkshire Police kept him overnight, sending Sutcliffe to West Yorkshire Police the next day. But Sergeant Ring was troubled: something wasn’t right. On a hunch, he decided to return to Melbourne Avenue and went to where Sutcliffe relieved himself. He found a ball-peen hammer and a knife behind a storage tank; another knife would be found in the lavatory at the station house.
When taken to West Yorkshire Police to be interviewed, it was not the first time Sutcliffe was interviewed as a Ripper suspect – far from it. West Yorkshire Police interviewed him nine times over the years, three times in one calendar year, yet Sutcliffe was never a leading suspect.
Tyre tracks and a £5 note to the first interview.
Sutcliffe left tyre tracks at the scene of the Richardson murder. That was avoidable; he should not have driven on the grass. Nor should he have left the £5 note he gave Jean Jordan on 1 October 1977 behind, but he never found her handbag; police found it in a garden meters away from the body.
It was a new five pound note and working with the banks, the police discovered that it could have been slipped into any one of 300 pay packets. Sutcliffe was on the list. He was interviewed at home on 2 November 1977. Sutcliffe said he was in bed by 11:30 pm the night Jean Jordan was murdered. Wife Sonia backed him up and would again on 8 November later during a second interview, when Sutcliffe said he was at a housewarming party on 9 October. Kathleen Sutcliffe echoed her daughter-in-law. But Sutcliffe had left the party to return to the scene of the crime. Unable to find the £5 note, he took out his frustration on the rotting body, stripping and mutilating it before, in an effort to confuse the authorities, cutting off the head.
Forensics knew for certain that the body had been moved because of fly eggs.
As the late former Home Office pathologist Professor Mike Green (who worked on the Ripper case) explained, certain flies lay their eggs in the sun. Others prefer the shade. The presence of eggs laid by different flies revealed that the body had been moved.
And forensics discovered that the body had been further desecrated on 9 October, prompting the second police interview. Backed up by his wife and mother, Sutcliffe had a solid alibi.
The police interviewed him twice in 1978, on 13 August 1978 and 23 November.
He was interviewed yet again on 29 July 1979 after his car was spotted no less than 36 times in Bradford, twice in Leeds and once in Manchester by Ripper surveillance teams.
Detective Constable Andrew Laptew sensed immediately there was ‘something not quite right about this man.’.
He trotted a certain joke when interviewing suspects at home, turning to the man’s wife and saying: ‘Now’s your chance to get rid of your husband for good.’. It had never failed to get a laugh.
All the Sutcliffes did was stare.
Laptew was perturbed. This couple was not normal and he knew it. His partner, Detective Constable Graham Greenwood, agreed. Laptew wrote a two-page report detailing the suspicions he and Greenwood held, recommending that Sutcliffe be interviewed by senior detectives. It was filed away, destined to languish in a cabinet. To his credit, Laptew would tell a superior he ‘did not like’ Sutcliffe, who could very well be the Ripper. The man responded by giving him a dressing down in front of fifty police officers, warning one and all that anyone who did not believe the Ripper was a Geordie – the official line at the time – would end up directing traffic.
Laptew was humiliated. He even felt ‘stupid’. But he wasn’t wrong.
Sutcliffe was interviewed by police again on 23 October 1979 about his car having been spotted so frequently in red light districts. An inspector Sifting through the Ripper file backlog was not satisfied with the answers Sutcliffe gave. So he was interviewed yet again and samples of his handwriting for the second time.
He was eliminated as a suspect.
Sutcliffe was interviewed for the seventh time at home on 13 January 1980, four months after Barbara Leach was murdered. This time, he had no alibi. This time, the house was searched; his boots and tools in the garage were examined.
Detectives interviewed Sutcliffe alone on 30 January, turning up at work. Even he could not believe they showed him photographs of Josephine Whitaker and the boot print found, yet failed to notice he was wearing the very same pair of boots. Loading his lorry, Sutcliffe realised ‘they could look up and see for themselves that I was wearing those boots. But they didn’t. They couldn’t see what were in front of their own eyes.’
The last interview before his arrest was on the 7th of February 1980. Sutcliffe was questioned at home yet again about his car in red light districts, but calmly gave the detectives alibis. And he had an alibi for his whereabouts the night Josephine Whitaker was murdered, confirmed by the ever-obliging Sonia.
The tenth police interview did not go so well. This time, Sutcliffe had been arrested and was in a station house answering questions.
It took twenty-four hours for him to confess, possibly prompted by a strip-search that revealed an essential part of his kill kit, an inverted v-neck pullover that left his genitals exposed under his trousers. When asked what he was wearing, Sutcliffe gave a two word reply:
‘Leg warmers.’
He was hardly like you to reveal that the pullover allowed him to kneel in relative comfort when he masturbated over corpses.
The trial was in London, at the Old Bailey. It lasted just a fortnight; Sutcliffe was found guilty on all counts, the jury ignoring the four psychiatrists (two for the defence, two for the prosecution) who diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic, but listening intently to the testimony of a prison officer. He overheard Sutcliffe tell Sonia that if believed to be mad, he might spend only 10 years in a ‘loony bin’.
Sutcliffe managed to get himself diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic once again in 1984. Prison did not agree with him. Accordingly, he spent the 32 years at Broadmoor Hospital, until a health tribunal determined he was no longer mentally ill and sent him back to prison, saving taxpayers £250,000 a year.
Was Sutcliffe a paranoid schizophrenic? Or just evil?
He will not be missed. But his victims were missed and continue to be missed today. And Sutcliffe harmed his victims’ families; Neil Jackson bitterly regrets that his mother died without knowing his children and grandchildren. Sonia McCann, depressed for years, felt she had no right to live longer than her mother had. She ended her life at twenty-eight.
The victims were daughters and sisters, mothers and wives and partners. Whether they sex workers or students should never have mattered. But it did to West Yorkshire Police, on the whole preferring to listen to none-too-clever George Oldfield rather than survivors. It was survivor Marilyn Moore, a sex worker, who gave such an accurate description of Sutcliffe that the resultant photo fit looked exactly like him. Yet when Detective Constable Andrew Laptew pointed this out, he was shut down. So Sutcliffe continued to kill until a routine check led to his arrest, ending a five years of terror for hundreds of thousands of women in the north of England.
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