The Yorkshire Ripper - Double episode
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$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes each detail. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mint Mobile, we like to do the opposite of what big wireless does. They charge you a lot, we charge you a little. So naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you.

That's right. We're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how.

I am your host, Thomas Weyborg Thun, and in tonight's episode, we travel back across the Middle Passage, the Atlantic, and once more back in the United Kingdom, Northern England, to be precise, Yorkshire. And if you follow the topic of serial murder, the mere name of that city will bring forth an immediate nickname.

The Yorkshire Ripper. Sometimes also referred to as Wearside Jack. England has two very famous serial killers that share parts of their nicknames. Jack the Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper. Jack operated, as we know, and we'll look closer at in a later episode, in the Victorian era.

In Yorkshire, however, their Ripper terrorized the populace in the latter end of the 1970s until his capture in 1981. Unlike Jack, the Ripper in Yorkshire is known to us. His name is Peter William Sutcliffe and he is responsible for the brutal murders of 13 women.

The fear of Peter Sutcliffe inflicted upon not only Yorkshire, but whole of UK is quite unique in modern European history. But the Yorkshire Ripper case was not only the story of one killer, it is also the story of police incompetence and a more contemporary controversy regarding mental health care and prisoner safety.

Although the Yorkshire Ripper case happened over 35 years ago, it's still very much part of the public dialogue. Imagine, dear listener, a bleak English twilight evening. The reports are scarce in their detail,

But perhaps it was one of those cloudy evenings, maybe even fog or rain. A young man, a bit stocky with a full black beard, blue eyes and black curly hair, named Peter, is walking along the red light district in Yorkshire. He was angry and resentful because he was certain his then-girlfriend, Sonia Zhurma, had been unfaithful.

Instead of breaking up with her, he wanted revenge. So he sought out a prostitute so he, too, could say he had been unfaithful. The hooker he ended up with is unnamed. What is known is that her actions released a deep, savage anger and unleashed something very wicked upon the people of Yorkshire. The young Peter paid her ten pounds for sex, but as soon as she had the money...

her pimp entered the room and upon threat of violence forced peter to leave following this humiliation peter sought her out some nights later in a bar demanding his money back she looked him in the eye and laughed at him now your humble host can only speculate as to the true cause of the yorkshire ripper's atrocities

Bullying, problems with parents, genetical issues or something else. But it is clear that after suffering this humiliation, Peter Sutcliffe started a campaign of savage murder that lasted at least five years. But before he became synonymous with evil, Peter was the firstborn son of John and Kathleen Sutcliffe.

He was born in Bingley, an industrial county of Yorkshire, England, on the 2nd of June 1946, weighing only 5 pounds, but healthy in every way. As they took him home from the hospital, both parents were confident that their son would grow up to be like his father, a burly man, loved to play and watch any type of sport, and an extrovert who loved a drink at a local pub.

John looked forward to the day that he and his son would share the manly pleasures of life. But Peter would not grow to be a man's man like his father. He was a quiet, shy boy who much preferred to stay indoors with his mother rather than join in the rough games of his younger brothers and sisters, choosing to read rather than play sport.

Greatly intimidated by his father's aggressive masculinity, he found a safe haven in his mother, a gentle, loving woman who adored all six of her children. At school, which he always hated, Peter did not attempt to integrate with the other children.

He would spend each play hour standing alone in a safe corner, away from the other children, avoiding the rough games from which he, being small and not particularly strong, invariably came out the worst for wear. His father's concern for his son during his primary years led him to visit Peter at his school each afternoon, hoping to encourage his son to join in with the other children, but to no avail.

The move to secondary school was no better for Peter. He became the subject, as so many future serial killers both before and after him, of severe bullying, culminating in his truancy from school for two weeks before his parents were informed of his absence. He had spent the two weeks hiding in the upstairs loft, reading comics and books by torchlight.

Although the bullying stopped after the school took action, Peter, who never fought with the other boys or chased after the girls, was seen as different, set apart from the rest. In the last years of secondary school, Peter attempted to fit in with the other boys and overcome the stigma of outcasts he had been given in his younger years.

He took up bodybuilding and was soon, to his father's great delight, able to beat both of his brothers at arm wrestling. While still showing no sign of interest in girls, he would learn to play some sports in order to fit in, but his fear of leaving a mark or bringing attention to himself would cause him to never excel in any area of his schooling.

He left school at the age of 15, with no clear focus of what he wanted to do with his life. Over the next two years, Peter would change jobs regularly. He started in the mill where his father worked, but within a few weeks left to begin an engineering apprenticeship, which he quit after only nine months.

His next job was as a laborer in a factory, but again, after only a short time, he quit to work as a grave digger at the Bingley Cemetery. Peter continued to be devoted to his mother all through his teen years, and would happily run errands for her and spend a great deal of time with her.

Things were not so good with his father, who, Peter felt, spent far too much time away from the family home with sport and socializing, an issue that Peter had always resented. For John Sutcliffe, his greatest concerns about his son were allayed by the time Peter celebrated his 18th birthday.

Although he never did share his father's love of sport, he had taken up bodybuilding and other manly pursuits, including a passion for riding and repairing motorbikes. The only other concern was that Peter still showed no interest in girls and had never had a girlfriend. In his 20th year, while with friends at the Royal Standard, a hotel in Manningham Lane,

Peter deliberately approached a girl for the first time. Her name was Sonia Shurma, the second daughter of Maria and Bohdan Shurma, immigrants from Czechoslovakia. Now living in Bradford, Polish-born Bohdan, a physical education teacher and university lecturer in Czechoslovakia, was not happy with his daughter's choice at first.

But in time, he would come to see Peter as a hard-working man, who was careful with money, and most importantly, who treated his daughter well. Sonia held hopes of becoming a teacher when she met Peter, and although they would not marry for another eight years, the intention to marry had always been an unspoken expectation for the couple. In the eyes of John and Kathleen Sutcliffe,

peter had grown up to be the ideal son as far as they could tell his only flaw was his work record which was tainted by his habitual lateness and eventually cost him his job at the cemetery after which he held a number of laboring positions

By April of 1973, his final problems seemed to be cured, when he began his first really steady job doing permanent night shift at the Britannia Works of Anderton International. In 1974, at the age of 28, the family pressure for Peter and Sonia to marry had finally convinced him that they should do so,

even if they hadn't yet saved for a deposit on a house, and Sonia had not been able to complete her teaching degree because of a schizophrenic episode during the second year into her course. With the decision that they would live together with Sonia's parents, they married on the 10th of August, Sonia's 24th birthday.

Peter had succeeded in creating a public persona that was exemplary, described by many as hard-working and quiet, a caring and loving husband who kept to himself with no outward signs of violence and depravity he had hidden deep within him. There were very few who had seen the other side of Peter.

Gary Jackson, who had worked with Peter at the cemetery, had found his pleasure in playing morbid pranks with the skeletons and the theft of rings from the hands of some of those he buried, to be more than a little macabre. His brother-in-law, Robin Holland, would often go out drinking with Peter in the red-light districts of Yorkshire, where Peter would habitually brag about his exploits with the prostitutes in the area.

while at home he would continue to play the part of family saint who would make grand stands about the immorality of men who cheated on their wives eventually peter's hypocrisy became too much for robin and he refused to go out with him any more trevor bertall on the other hand had become friends with peter at about the same time as he met sonia

and he and peter would spend hundreds of hours over the next few years in pubs and cruising the streets of the red light districts in peter's succession of cars peter had seemed to have a liking for prostitutes mixed with a strange anger trevor remembered vividly a night in bradford in nineteen sixty nine when peter had left him in the car for a few minutes

When he returned, Peter told him that he tried to hit a prostitute with a brick he had put inside a sock, but the sock had fallen apart and the brick had fallen out. Despite his strange behavior, Trevor would remain friends with Peter until his arrest in 1981. Six months after his marriage to Sonia, Peter Sutcliffe took the opportunity of a £400 redundancy package.

He used the money to acquire his license to drive large trucks. On 4th of June 1975, two days after his 29th birthday, he passed the HGV test class 1 and then bought himself a white Ford Corsair with a black roof while keeping his first car, a lime green Ford Carpree GT.

During the following month, Peter was to tell friends and family of the sad news of Sonja's many miscarriages. Soon after the latest miscarriage, Peter and Sonja were informed that Sonja would not be able to have the children that they both wanted so much. So around the time he is informed his wife cannot have children, Peter finds himself deeply humiliated by this prostitute.

Combined with childhood traumas, and most probably a psychopathic personality disorder, this triggered the start of something that still haunts Northern England. Anna Patricia Rogulski lived in Kili. The slim, attractive blonde in her early thirties had been divorced from her Ukrainian husband for two years.

On the night of 4th of July, 1975, she and boyfriend Jeff Hughes, whom she expected to marry in the near future, had a fight. Still angry, she had left him to go out drinking with friends at a club in Bradford. Her two Jamaican friends dropped her outside of her home at 1 a.m., where she expected to find her boyfriend. He wasn't there.

Her earlier anger with him soon resurfaced, and she decided to walk across town to his house to finally sort things out. As she fruitlessly banged upon the door, Peter Sutcliffe stood in the shadows watching. Finally, in frustration, she removed one of her shoes and broke the glass of a downstairs window.

As she knelt to put her shoe back on, Peter quickly emerged from the shadows and struck her a savage blow to the head. Anna had not seen or heard anything and was unconscious as he dealt her another two blows with his hammer. Peter paused momentarily to catch his breath as the blood from Anna's wounds seeped across the cobblestones. He lifted her skirt and pulled down her underpants.

as he returned the hammer to his pocket and took out a knife his anger under control until now found expression with each slashing cut across her stomach the voice of a concerned neighbor disturbed by the noise quickly quelled the frenzied outpouring of peter's rage thus the neighbor stood peering out in the alley trying to focus in the poor light

Peter Sutcliffe pulled himself together and spoke calmly, as he reassured the man that all was well and to go back inside, which he did. Peter straightened Anna's clothing and was gone as quickly as he had come. After Peter returned home to his sleeping wife to continue his life as usual, Anna was found and rushed to the casualty department of Airedale Hospital.

From there, she was transferred to Leeds General Infirmary for an emergency operation that lasted 12 hours. At one point, she was read the last rites. Miraculously, she survived. But, unlike Peter, her life would never be the same after that night.

She returned to her home where she would live alone with her five cats, barricaded behind a network of wires and alarms. She is terrified of strangers and rarely goes out. When she does, she walks in the middle of the street, as she is afraid of the shadows and terrified of people approaching her from behind. There is no boyfriend now, and no prospects of marriage.

The £15,000 she received from the criminal compensation board cannot buy back her life. In interviews, she has stated suicidal tendencies, wishing that she had died that terrible night so many years ago. The police were mystified by the attack, which appeared to have no motive. No money was stolen, and there be no sexual attack.

Her boyfriend and all her friends had been cleared, and there were no further leads apart from a vague description, given by the neighbor, of a man in his late twenties or early thirties, about five foot eight, and wearing a Czech sports coat. During the next month, while Peter looked for work as a driver, Sonia decided to complete her teacher training and enrolled at the Margaret Macmillan College in Bradford.

on friday the fifteenth of august peter drove his friend trevor burchold to halifax where they drank in a number of pubs it wasn't one of these pubs that peter had first seen mrs olive smelt

Forty-six-year-old Olive had followed her usual Friday night pattern of meeting her girlfriends for a drink in Halifax, while her husband Harry stayed at home with their fifteen-year-old daughter Julie and nine-year-old son Stephen. Two men known well by the women gave them all a lift home. Olive was dropped in Booth Town Road, a short walk from her home. At the same time, Peter left Trevor alone in his car.

As Olive took a shortcut through an alleyway at 11.45 p.m., Peter walked up behind her and overtook her. The last thing Olive could remember was Peter saying, "'Weather's letting us down, innit?' before he dealt her a heavy blow to the back of the head, hit her again as she fell to the ground, and then slashed at her back with his knife just above her buttocks."

He was again prevented from completing his task. A car was quickly approaching, so Peter left Olive and returned to the car where Trevor was waiting. A mere ten minutes had passed. Olive could not recall how she came to be found some yards down the road, moaning and calling for help. Neighbors took her to their home, where they called for an ambulance and sent someone to inform Harry.

She was initially rushed to Halifax Infirmary and then to Leeds Infirmary, where she spent ten days. Once again, Peter had left another woman's life in pieces. Olive would continue to suffer from severe depression and memory loss. For months, she would wish that she were dead as the repercussions of the attack took hold of her life. She was continually depressed and took no interest in her life.

She lived in fare, especially of men, and would sometimes look at her husband and wonder, hadn't he been a police suspect? Their relationship was permanently altered, and she rarely felt like having sex. Her past enjoyment of homemaking and cooking was lost, and she now completed these tasks in robotic fashion.

Her oldest daughter suffered a nervous breakdown, which doctors were sure was a direct result of the attack. And for many years, her son would continue to lock the door whenever he left his mother alone in the house. Despite the similarities between the two apparently motiveless attacks upon Anna Rogolsky and Olive Smelt, police would not link them for some time.

It would be three years before they would confirm that the attacker was in fact the Yorkshire Ripper. Two times Peter had let his inner demons get the better of him, but both times his victims had survived and he had been interrupted. This left him feeling unfulfilled and his anger simply grew. He needed it to be just so.

just as he had dreamed about so many times on his own. Peter had, in September 1975, began work as a lorry driver. This offered him great flexibility regarding scouting for victims and a ready excuse for not being at home with his barren wife, Willow Mina McCann, who preferred to be known as Wilma, was a fiery Scottish 28-year-old and a mother of four.

Her body was found on the morning of 30th of October 1975, lying face upwards on a sloping grass embankment of the Prince Philip playing fields, off Scott Hall Road, just a hundred yards from her council home in nearby Scott Hall Avenue. Wilma had never settled into the mundane life of a wife and mother.

much preferring the excitement of the night life in the many leeds hotels on the night of her death she had left her four children in the care of her eldest daughter nine-year-old sonia to go out drinking she was to drink heavily until closing time at ten thirty p m and then make her way home along the way a lorry driver stopped when wilma flagged him down

but continued on his way when he was greeted with a mixture of incoherent instructions and abuse, leaving her by the side of the road. She was seen at about 1.30 a.m. being picked up by a West Indian man, who was the second last person to see her alive. Soon after 5 a.m., a neighbor found Vilma's two oldest daughters huddled together at a bus stop.

They were cold, confused and frightened. Their mummy hadn't come home the night before, and they were waiting in the hope that she would come home by bus. Detective Chief Superintendent Dennis Hoban was in charge of the inquiry. When Professor Gee, the pathologist, completed his report, Hoban learned that Wilma had been struck twice with a blunt object at the back of the head.

causing the skull to break and probably inflicting immediate blindness and rapid unconsciousness in the victim. Wilma had then, after falling to the ground, been stabbed deeply in the neck, chest and abdomen 15 times. There were traces of semen found on the back of her trousers and underpants, both of which were found pulled down.

By the time the coroner's verdict of murder by person or persons unknown had been handed down, the 150 police officers that Hoban had working on the case had interviewed 7,000 householders and 6,000 lorry drivers. They had taken hundreds of statements from anyone with even the remotest connections to Wilma,

Each one painstakingly checked, but still they had not even come close to finding her killer. Emily Monica Jackson, 42 years old, lived with her husband and three children in Back Green, Cherwell, on the outskirts of Morley, west of Leeds. The Jacksons had been having financial problems for some time when Emily decided to begin taking money for sexual favors.

Together, Emily and husband Sidney would drive their blue Commer van into Leeds, where Sidney would wait for his wife in one of the bars, while Emily would use the van to earn the extra money they needed. On the night of Tuesday, the 20th of January, 1976, they parked their van in the car park of the Gaiety Bar and went inside.

they had a drink together and then emily left to see whom she could find outside sydney was to wait there until she returned at closing time when she wasn't there to meet him he took a taxi home expecting her to follow in the van shortly after but she never returned home

Emily's mutilated body was found just after 8 a.m. The following morning, only 800 yards from the gaiety where her husband had waited for her. Peter Sutcliffe had left Emily lying on her back with her legs apart. She was still wearing her tights and pants, but her bra was pulled up, exposing her breasts. Like Wilma before her, Peter had struck Emily on the head twice with his hammer.

and then stabbed her lower neck upper chest and lower abdomen fifty-one times with a sharpened phillips screwdriver peter's need to vent his anger upon the already dead emily caused him to make a slip he stomped on emily's right thigh leaving the impression of his heavy-ribbed wellington boot

The boot was further identified as a Dunlop Warwick, probably size 7, definitely no larger than an 8. Another print was found in the sand nearby. Detective Hoban knew immediately that the man who had killed Emily Jackson was the same man that killed Wilma McCann. Sidney Jackson, devastated by the vicious and senseless murder of his wife...

believed that the man would kill again and prayed that he would be soon caught. He wept for his wife and sent their children to stay with relatives until he could tell them the terrible news of their mother's death. On the 5th of March, 1976, Peter Sutcliffe was fired from his job with the tire company. Although he had been a good worker, Peter was constantly late for work.

his late-night forays into the red-light districts of yorkshire made it difficult for him to arise early enough for work it would take him many months of rejection and frustration before he could find work as a lorry driver because of his lack of experience

In the same month, George Oldfield, assistant chief constable at West Yorkshire Police Headquarters in Wakefield, received the first in a series of letters by a person claiming to be the Yorkshire Ripper. In total, he received three letters and one taped recording that the police ended up spending a lot of energy on.

However, it was proven in 2006 that all those letters and the tape was a hoax, perpetrated by John Samuel Humble. The letters caused the police to focus their attention on the wrong suspects and the wrong evidence, thus sealing the fate of several more victims of the real Yorkshire Ripper. Mr. Humble was eventually prosecuted,

and convicted of obstruction of justice and sentenced to prison, much as a result of Peter Sutcliffe's actual confessions to police after his arrest. Peter actually only sent a single letter to the police. So do not, dear listener, think that the stories you read online about his bragging to the public is true.

And this letter, in the form of a nice poem I will read to you shortly, was only sent very close to his final arrest. The fake letters was made very public. Peter probably read them all with glee. His actual letter makes fun of the officers involved in the case. It is titled Clueless and reads as follows.

Poor old Oldfield worked in a cold field. Hobson has no choice, misled by a voice. Release of Drury arouses fury. Bradford was not me. But just wait and see. Sheffield will not be missed. Next on the list, The Street Dancer.

The letter is simply signed with the initials T.S. So, shielded by false trails and an apparent incompetent police investigation, we witness as Marcella Claxton, a 20-year-old prostitute, walked home from a drinking party held by friends in Chapel Town around 4 a.m. on the morning of the 9th of May, 1976.

A large white car pulled up alongside of her. She wasn't working that night, but she asked the driver for a lift. Instead of driving her home, he drove her to Soldier's Field, just off Roundhay Road. Peter offered Marcella five pounds to get out of the car and undress for sex on the grass, but she refused the offer. As they both got out of the car, Marcella heard a thud,

Something Peter had dropped hit the ground. He told her it was his wallet. Marcella then went behind a tree to urinate. Peter walked towards her, and the next thing she felt was the blow of Peter's hammer as he brought it down upon the back of her head. Then she felt a second blow. She lay back on the grass, looking at the blood on her hand from where she had touched her head.

Peter stood nearby. She remembered vividly that his hair and beard were black and crinkly, and that he was masturbating as he watched her bleeding on the ground. He went back to the white car with the red upholstery to get some tissues to clean himself up.

When he finished, he threw the tissues on the ground and placed a five-pound note in Marcella's hand, warning her not to call police as he got back into his car. Marcella, her clothes now covered in blood, managed to half walk, half crawl to a nearby telephone box, where she called for an ambulance.

As she sat on the floor and waited for help, she would see Peter drive past many times looking for her, probably to finish the job and rid himself of a vital witness. The gaping wound in the back of her head required 52 stitches and a seven-day stay in hospital. For months after the attack, she would hate men, barely able to even be in the same room with them.

Even five years after the attack, she would be plagued by depression and dizzy spells and be unable to hold down a job. The birth of her son Adrian coincided with Peter Sutcliffe's arrest in 1981, but neither event could ease the ache she had felt since her attack.

The attacks of the Yorkshire Ripper were by now the main topic of conversation among prostitutes and the patrons of the many pubs in the Leeds area. With little information in the papers about the nature of the murders, the public soon added their own horrific details, which were incredibly similar to the notorious crimes of Jack the Ripper in the previous century.

Prostitutes, in an attempt to protect themselves, were seen working in groups, making it very clear to their clients that the details of their car and registrations were being recorded. Increased police activity in the area put further pressure on the already strained relationship between the prostitutes and officers of the law, creating a formidable barrier to police investigations.

The fact that the attacks on Anna Rogolsky and Olive Smelt had not yet been linked with the other Yorkshire Ripper murders resulted in a complacency in the general population who seemed to view prostitutes as somehow deserving of the Yorkshire Ripper's punishments.

During the summer of 1976, George Oldfield promoted Dennis Hoban to the position of deputy head of the 4th CID. While honored at the confidence shown in him by the appointment, he was disappointed that he would have to leave Leeds to work from the West Yorkshire police headquarters at Wakefield, nor was he happy to be desk-bound in his new position.

Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Hobson replaced Hoban. In October 1976, Peter Sutcliffe came home to his wife with the good news that he had finally found work as a lorry driver. He was now working with T. and W.H. Clark Holdings Limited on the Canal Road Industrial Estate between Shipley and Bradford.

It would be five months before Peter would kill again. Jim Hobson would head the investigation into this attack, as his predecessor, Hoban, had done nine months earlier, when Marcella Claxton had survived Peter's last attack.

On Saturday, the 5th of February, 28-year-old Irene Richardson left her rooming house in Cowper Street, Chapel Town, at 11.30 p.m. to go to Tiffany's Club. At the time of her attack, Irene would have thought that life couldn't get any worse. Both of her daughters, aged 4 and 5, were with foster parents.

She had nowhere decent to live, and due to lack of money, had to walk the streets of Chapel Town to look for customers. When Peter Sutcliffe had finished with Irene, he had left her laying face down in Soldier's Field, placing her coat over her inert and bloodied body. He had given her a massive fracture of the skull, with three blows he inflicted with his hammer.

One of the blows had been so severe that a circular piece of her skull had actually penetrated her brain. He had stabbed her in the neck and throat, and three more times in the stomach. Savage downward strokes, so severe that they had caused her intestines to spill out. When Hobson and the pathologist, Professor G., removed her coat...

They found that while her bra was still in place, her skirt had been lifted up and her tights pulled off the right leg and down. One of the two pairs of pants she had been wearing had been removed and stuffed down her tights, while the other pair was still in place. Her calf-length brown boots had been removed and placed neatly over her thighs.

A vaginal swab showed the presence of semen, but it was considered to have been from sexual activity prior to the attack. Near Irene's body, tire tracks were discovered and recorded. They indicated that killer had used a medium-sized sedan or van.

checks with tire manufacturers established that the vehicle had been fitted with two india auto way tires and a nement brand on the rear off side all of them cross ply with the assistance of tire manufacturers a list of twenty six possible car models was drawn up it seemed that a genuine break had finally been made in the investigation but hobson's elation would be short-lived

Police officers, without the benefits of computerization, had moved into local vehicle taxation offices each night to hand-check all the vehicles in West Yorkshire compatible with the list. The final tally was 100,000 cars. Patricia Atkinson was living alone again after her divorce from Asian immigrant worker Ray Mitra.

After the birth of their three daughters, Judy, Jill and Lisa, in quick succession, Ray would find his marriage to his wayward western wife to be more than he could handle. Patricia, who preferred to be known as Tina, was happy with the new arrangement, as she was now free to drink and dance as often as she pleased.

She operated as a prostitute from her small flat at No. 9 Oak Avenue in Bradford, where she felt safe from the threat of the Ripper who killed his women outside. Being slim with dark hair and always smartly dressed, she had no shortage of men friends.

On Saturday, on the 23rd of April, she was seen by the caretaker of the building in which she lived, leaving her flat on her way to the busy red-light pubs where she was well known for her heavy drinking. She was seen in a number of pubs that night, and at 11 p.m. several women walking on the street had seen her walking, heading toward Church Street.

"'It was soon after this that Peter Sutcliffe had met the now well-intoxicated Tina. "'Together they walked to his car, and then drove back to her flat. "'As they entered through her front door, Peter struck the back of her head "'with the same ball-peen hammer he had used on all his previous victims. "'Before her unconscious body hit the floor, Peter struck her three more times.'

As the blood poured from her wounds, Peter began to remove her overcoat. He then lifted her and carried her to the bedroom and threw her down on the bed. There he ripped open her black leather jacket and blue shirt, pulling up her bra to reveal her breasts. He then pulled her jeans down to her ankles.

With a chisel he had removed from his pocket, he began to stab at Tina's exposed stomach. He then turned her over and stabbed her in the back, but had not penetrated the skin. Then he quickly turned her over again to stab her stomach again, leaving a total of six stab wounds. Before he left her, Peter had pulled her jeans back up, and without realizing it,

He left a size 7 Dunlop Warwick Wellington boot print on the bottom bed sheet. As Peter's activities as the notorious Yorkshire Ripper continued to escalate, his wife Sonia was approaching the end of her teaching training. She was confident that she would pass before the coming summer.

With his prospects of an increase in their income, Peter and Sonia began to see hope for the fulfillment of their dream to buy their own home. It would not be long before Sonia found the house of her dreams. Peter was not so sure it was his dream home when Sonia told him that the asking price was over £15,000.

It was a lot of money back then, and there was no guarantee that Sonia would get work straight away after the summer break. But he agreed to at least have a look at it. They went on a Saturday, the 25th of June, 1977. On the same night, Peter went to Chapel Town, supposedly for a drink. Jane MacDonald also went out on that Saturday night.

Jane was 16 years old and had recently started her first job in the shoe department of a local supermarket. She was going out dancing and she was happy. She kissed her father goodbye before she left their home in Reginald Terrace, Chapleton, for the last time. After the dance, Jane had gone with friends to buy chips in the city centre.

As she gossiped with her friends, the last bus home departed without her. At 11.50 p.m., she began walking home with Mark Jones, a young boy she had met earlier that night. He was to organize a lift home for her with his sister, but the sister wasn't home when they got there. Jane and Mark continued walking together, stopping for a brief kiss and a cuddle as far as the Florence Nightingale Public House.

It was 1.30 when they went their separate ways. At a kiosk near Doc Green Pub, near the corner of Beckett Street, Jane stopped at 1.45 a.m. to call a taxi. There was no answer. As she approached the playground, she did not see Peter Sutcliffe lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce on her as she passed by. Two children found her body.

at 9.45 a.m. on Sunday the 26th of June, near a wall inside the playground where Peter had dragged her. She was lying face down, her skirt was disarranged, and her white halter-neck top was pulled up to expose her breasts. Peter had struck her three times on the back of the head with his hammer, and then stabbed her repeatedly in the chest and once in the back.

from the moment wilfred mcdonald jane's father was told of his daughter's murder by the two uniformed police officers who had come to his door that sunday morning he lost the will to live he soon developed nervous asthma and could not work instead he would sit for hours at a time thinking only of his daughter it would take two years but he finally died of a broken heart

Assistant Chief Constable George Holdfield was called upon soon after Jane's body was found. He would now be overseeing all the investigations into the Yorkshire Ripper murders and would work in the field with the officers already involved in the case. Newspaper reports the following day.

stating that an innocent young woman had been slaughtered, sadly reflected the underlying attitude of police and the public that prostitutes who are murdered are not innocent, and somehow deserved whatever punishment that is meted out to them. Police were now inundated with information from the public.

People who once were interested only in hearing the gory details of the attacks now felt personally affronted and threatened by the man they called the Yorkshire Ripper. Where previously witnesses were reluctant to admit any connection with the murdered prostitutes, people from the surrounding area were readily volunteering information to help the police in their attempts to catch Jane's killer.

Under the direction of Oldfield, police policy regarding the media was become more open, working cooperatively to ensure that the public were kept informed of the facts that it needed, while suppressing the release of information which would hinder police investigations.

Oldfield personally visited members of every level of the community in an attempt to break down barriers to public police cooperation. Officers involved in the investigation into the brutal murder of Jane MacDonald interviewed residents in 679 homes in the immediate vicinity of the attack.

Over 13,000 interviews in total, with nearly 4,000 statements taken. Despite all of these efforts, Peter Sutcliffe was able to continue to hide behind his mask of respectability, and the Yorkshire Ripper continued his rampage. Even while police worked feverishly gathering information in relation to Jane MacDonald's murder,

Peter Sutcliffe prepared to kill again. It was Saturday. It was night on the 9th of July, 1977, when Peter left Sonia at home in Tanton Crescent with her parents. Driving the white Corsair with a black roof, he headed for Manningham Lane and the red-light Lum Lane district of Bradford. Maureen Long...

At home in Farsley, Nair Leeds also made preparations to spend Saturday night in Bradford. She spent the first part of the evening visiting various pubs in Bradford, including one where she met her estranged husband and made arrangements to spend the night at his home in Leicester Dyke, Bradford. The rest of the evening was spent at Tiffany's in the Bali High Discotheque,

where she danced and drank until just after 2 a.m. As she waited in the long queue at a nearby taxi rank to get a lift to her husband's home, a white car pulled up. The driver, Peter Sutcliffe, offered her a lift. Peter drove Maureen to Bowling Back Lane, where he struck her a massive blow to the back of the head. As she lay on the ground, he stabbed her in the abdomen and back.

The barking of a dog nearby interrupted his frenzied attack, and he left Maureen for dead as he fled the scene. His car was seen leaving the area by a night watchman who was working nearby at 3.27 a.m. He described the car as a Ford Cortina Mark II, white with a black roof. Two women living in a nearby caravan found Maureen the next morning.

They had heard cries for help, went to investigate, and found Maureen Long lying seriously injured on the ground. She should have been dead. The injuries she sustained would have killed most people. But somehow Maureen survived. She was rushed to hospital in Bradford, where she underwent emergency surgery. Later, she was transferred to Leeds for major neurological surgery.

Oldfield begged doctors for an opportunity to talk with Maureen before they commenced surgery. Maureen tried hard to recall as many details as she could. She remembered leaving Tiffany's and the car that had stopped to give her a lift. The man, as she recalled, was white with a large build, about 35, with light brown shoulder-length hair.

He would have been about six foot, with puffed cheeks and big hands. She wasn't sure about the color of the car. It was white or yellow or blue. She would not remember anything when she came out of surgery. For Peter and Sonia Sutcliffe, life was really beginning to improve.

On the 18th of August 1977, they had exchanged contracts for the purchase of their lovely new home, and Sonia began her first teaching position at Holmfield First School in Bradford, two weeks later. Then, on Monday 26th,

They moved into their home, and Peter bought himself another second-hand Ford Corsair, a red one, to replace the white Corsair he had sold on the 31st of August. The following Saturday, 1st of October 1977, after spending the day working on his new car, he decided to take it out for a test drive.

By 9.30 p.m., Jean-Bernadette Jordan was climbing into the car with him near her home in Moss Side, Manchester. Jean, born in Scotland, had moved to Manchester after running away from home at the age of 16. She had met Alan Royal on the day of her arrival and moved in with him. Two years later, they had their first child, Alan.

Two years after that, their second son, James, was born. Although they were still living together when she was murdered, they had mutually agreed to live separate lives. Earlier on the evening of 1st of October, as Jean poured Alan a glass of lemonade, he told her that he would be going out for the evening. He left her watching television, but she was gone when he returned later.

He assumed that she had decided to go out with her friends, who were also on the game. Instead, she had taken Peter Sutcliffe to a quiet area of vacant land between allotments and a southern cemetery, where she was to have sexual intercourse with him for five pounds. Before getting out of the car, she put the five-pound note in a hidden compartment of her handbag.

Once out of the car, Peter used his hammer to hit John over the head a total of thirteen times. He then hid her body in undergrowth near the fence between the cemetery and the allotments.

Peter, now fully recovered from the burst of frenzied anger, calmly drove home across the Pennines to Sonia and his new house, and anxiously awaited the headlines that would announce his deeds to the world. As he and Sonia planned the housewarming party to be held on Sunday evening, Peter began to worry about the five-pound note he had given John.

It was a brand new note, and it may be possible to trace it back to him. By Sunday, the 9th of October, there still had been no word of the discovery of Jean's body in the papers. If he was at all troubled by the events of the week before, his party guests could not tell. It was almost midnight when Peter offered to take some of his relatives home in the Red Corsair while Sonia went to bed.

After dropping his guests at their homes, Peter did not immediately return to Garden Lane. Instead, he drove over to the Penny Inn once again. He found John's body exactly as he had left it, but her handbag was missing. As he searched the area, he became frantic at the prospect of the police finding the five-pound note.

When his frustration and fury was at its peak, he dragged the lifeless and already rotting body away from its hiding place, tore at Jaune's clothing from her body, and then stabbed her over and over again. Eighteen times he stabbed at her breasts, chest, stomach, and vagina. There were fierce slashing swipes some eight inches deep.

One extended from her left shoulder down to her right knee. When the rage subsided, he thought again of the five-pound note and attempted to cut off Jean's head. His attention was to divert police attention by disposing of her head somewhere else. When he realized that it was an impossible task with the tools he had, he gave up and went home. It hadn't occurred to Alan to report Jean as missing.

she had often just taken off from home without notice to visit relatives in scotland so he assumed it was the same this time and that jeanne would turn up in her own good time it wasn't until he read the report in the paper on the evening of the tenth of october that he became concerned

The report described the young woman, who had been found by a neighbor at midday, as having shoulder-length auburn hair, and listed some of the clothing found. What the report didn't say was that her blackened head was unrecognizable. It had been flattened with the severity of the many blows she had received. Her belly was gaping open, and putrefaction was evident.

On Saturday, the 15th of October, Jean Jordan's handbag was found only 100 yards from where her body had lain the week before. The money that Alan believed she'd been carrying was missing, but in a hidden pocket at the front of the bag, police found a £5 Bank of England note.

The note, with the serial number AW51-12-1565, was brand new, issued only a couple of days before Jean was killed. The Bank of England established that the note was part of a consignment sent to Shipley and Bingley branches of the Midland Bank, right in the heart of the Yorkshire Ripper area.

Ridgway was confident that a Yorkshire ripper could be found if they could trace the owner of the five-pound note. With this aim in mind, Ridgway, along with thirty hand-picked Manchester officers, travelled to Bradford and opened a special incident room at the Baildon School.

it was quickly established that the note in question had been part of a bundle of five hundred pounds and had been the fifth last note in a sequence of sixty-nine ridgeway's excitement soon abated when he learned that the note had been part of a batch

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Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. 17,500 pounds, which had been distributed to a number of firms in the Bradford and Shipley area that employed almost 8,000 men in total.

It would take Ridgway and his men three months to interview 5,000 of those men. One of the firms they had concentrated on was T&WH Clark Holdings Limited in Canal Road, Shipley. Just before Christmas, they interviewed the men that worked there, including Peter William Sutcliffe of Garden Lane, Heaton.

There had been nothing about Peter or the other 5,000 men that had seemed suspicious. They had even spoken to his wife, Sonia, who had not contradicted in any way Peter's account of the nights they asked him about. Even as the police were interviewing those thousands of men, one of them, the Yorkshire Ripper, struck again. But this time he would leave his victim to provide a strong identification of him and his car.

It had started on the 14th of December, when Marilyn Moore left her friend's home in Gathorn Terrace, near a gaugy pub at 8 p.m. As she walked along Gipton Avenue towards her home, she noticed a dark-colored car drive slowly toward her. Sure that the driver was a potential client, she began to walk to Leopold Street, where she assumed his car would next appear.

Her assumption proved correct when she found his car parked near a junction known as Franklin Place. The driver was leaning against the driver's door. He was about 30, stocky build, around 5 foot 6 inches tall, with dark wavy hair and a beard. He was wearing a yellow shirt, a navy blue black zip-up anorak, and blue jeans, and appeared to be waving at someone in a nearby house.

He asked her if she was doing business... and they set a price before she got into the car with him. As he drove her to a vacant lot in Scott Hall Street... about a mile and a half away... he told her that his name was Dave... and that the person he had been waving to was his girlfriend. When they arrived at their destination... Dave suggested that they have sex in the back seat. But when Marilyn got out of the car...

She found that the back door was locked. As Dave came behind her to open the door, Marilyn felt a searing, sickening blow on the top of her head. She screamed loudly and attempted to protect her head with her hands. As she fell to the ground, frantically grabbing her attacker's trousers as she fell, she felt further blows before losing consciousness.

A dog barked at the sound of Marilyn's screams, and Dave left before he could finish the job. Marilyn remembered him walking back to his car and slammed the door, and then she heard the back wheels skid as he hurriedly drove away. Slowly, Marilyn managed to get herself to her feet and stumbled towards a telephone.

Before she could, a man and a woman, noticing the blood running from her head, stopped to help and called an ambulance. She was rushed to Leeds General Infirmary for an emergency operation. She would stay there until just before New Year's Eve, but it would be a long time before she could face returning to Leeds. Back in Leeds again, where she returned to work as a prostitute, she continued to suffer from depression.

She still has a hole in the back of her head and scars all over her scalp. There was no doubt in the minds of the investigators that Madeline was another of the Yorkshire Ripper's victims. This was confirmed when the tyre tracks left by his car were found to match those found at the site of Irene Richardson's death.

Despite this new evidence, the hunt for the Ripper continued without success until the third week of January 1978, when Ridgeway pulled his team out of Bradford, knowing that they had probably met the killer and failed to recognize him. By the end of January 1978, police were beginning to wonder whether the Ripper had been scared off by his unsuccessful attack on Marilyn Moore,

What they did not know at the time was that he had in fact killed again on the night of the 21st of January. But the severely mutilated body of Yvonne Pearson would not be found until the end of March. Any hopes police may have had were soon put to an end in the first week in February when another of the Yorkshire Ripper's victims was found.

Helen and Rita Ritka were twin daughters of an Italian mother and Jamaican father. At the age of 18, when Helen was killed, they lived together in a miserable room next to a motorway flyover in Huddersfield. Although they both worked as prostitutes, they had dreams of a much better life in the future. In the meantime, they would continue to work the streets of Huddersfield Red Light District as a pair.

To ensure each other's safety, Helen and Rita agreed that they would always take the car number of every client and meet back at an appointed time after 20 minutes. A system which had worked well for them until the snowy night of Tuesday, 31st of January, 1978. Helen came back to the rendezvous point five minutes earlier than Rita, at 9.25 p.m.,

"'The opportunity to make an extra five pounds "'before her sister returned was too good to miss. "'So Helen got into the car with Peter Sutcliffe. "'They drove to Garrard's timber yard near the railway, "'a common haunt of prostitutes and their clients. "'Peter convinced her to get into the back seat. "'As she did so, Peter struck her with the hammer. "'He missed and hit the car door instead, "'alerting Helen to the danger she was in.'

But before she had a chance to scream, he had hit her again. She immediately crumpled to the ground. It was then that Peter realized they were in full view of two taxi drivers who stood talking nearby. Taking Helen by the hair, he dragged her to the back of the woodyard. Still alive, Helen vainly attempted to protect herself from the hammer, as Peter crashed it down onto her head again.

"'Scared that the taxi drivers would discover them, Peter lay on top of Helen and covered her mouth with his hand. Then he raped her as she lay bleeding. Finally the taxi drivers left, and Peter got up to find his hammer, which he had dropped. While he searched, Helen attempted to escape. As she ran from him, Peter hit her several more times on the back of the head.'

Still alive, Helen was dragged to the front of the car, where Peter stabbed her through the heart and lungs with a kitchen knife he had hidden in his car. Rita arrived back at the rendezvous point only five minutes after Helen had driven to her death. After waiting for some time in the freezing cold, she gave up and went home, assuming that Helen would be waiting for her there.

Fear of the police prevented her from reporting Helen's disappearance until Thursday. On Friday, the 3rd of February, a police Alsatian dog located Helen's body where Peter Sutcliffe had left her on the previous Tuesday. The aforementioned Yvonne Pearson had left her two girls, aged two years and five months old,

in the care of a babysitter on the night of 21st of January 1978, to see if she could earn some money. Her first stop that night had been the Flying Dutchman pub, which she was seen leaving at 9.30 p.m. Soon after that, Peter Sutcliffe invited her to get into his car to do some business. At the murder site, a landfill area filled with garbage and old furniture,

He hit her repeatedly on the head with a lump hammer. When she was dead, he jumped on her chest until all her ribs was crushed together with the lungs and heart. He hid her body under a discarded sofa. Fear of discovery by people in the area had cut short his time with Yvonne, and he had not stabbed her. A newspaper dated one month after the death of

was placed under her body, leading police to believe that the killer had returned to the scene of the crime. It would be another two months before Peter Sutcliffe would kill again. His next victim was 41-year-old Vera Millward, a Spanish-born mother of seven living with her Jamaican boyfriend, Cy Burkett, in their flat in Greenham Avenue in Holm. Vera had been very ill after an operation, the third in as many years.

She left her home on Tuesday the 16th of May to buy some cigarettes and pick up some painkillers from the nearby hospital. Some time after purchasing her cigarettes, she met Peter Sutcliffe. On the grounds of the Manchester Royal Infirmary, in a well-lit area, Peter Sutcliffe struck Vera on the head three times. Then, undressing her in his usual manner, he slashed her so viciously across her stomach that

that her intestines spilled out. He also stabbed her repeatedly in the one wound on her back, just below the lower left ribs, and puncture her right eyelid, bruising her eye. Her screams for help were heard and ignored by a man and his son entering the hospital at the time of her attack. People in this area...

were well accustomed to such cries in the night when he had finished with her peter dragged her body twelve feet away and dumped her by a chain-link fence on a rubbish pile in a corner of the car park she was found at eight ten a m the following morning lying on her right side face down with her arms folded beneath her and her legs straight peter had placed her shoes neatly on her body

Tire tracks were found nearby. They matched those left at the murder site of Irene Richardson and at the site where Marilyn Moore had been attacked. Complacency in this case had always presented a problem for police investigating the Yorkshire Ripper case. The period of 11 months since Vera Millward's murder had caused the public to relax. Maybe he had stopped.

A police psychologist had said that this might happen. The killer might just stop and never be heard from again. The police hoped that this was the case. However, during that 11-month lapse, Peter Sutcliffe's mother had died. It was on 8th of November 1978 that Kathleen Sutcliffe, who had suffered from angina for four years, had died of myocardial infarction.

and ischemic heart disease at the age of 59. Her eldest son, who had always been closest to her, was grief-stricken. He blamed his father for her death. John Sutcliffe had been guilty of many affairs during his years of marriage to Kathleen, which Peter felt had been responsible for his mother's illness.

Peter and Sonja had been living in their new home for over twelve months by this time, and had spent a great deal of time working on improvements. Their neighbors considered them to be an unusual couple that kept very much to themselves. While Sonja spent much of her time working in the garden, Peter would constantly work on his cars. In this time, he had replaced the red coarse air with a metallic gray sunbeam rapier.

At work, Peter was one of Clark's most conscientious drivers who kept immaculate logs and repair records. But his workmates would seem as a bit of a loner who kept very much to himself and never showed any signs of violence, nor did he swear or speak crudely about sex or women. When police interviewed him again, because his registration number had been noted in red-light areas, he was not noticeably concerned.

He explained that driving to and from work regularly took him through those very areas. The killer struck again. April 4th, 1979. Josephine Whittaker, a building society clerk, had walked a short mile to her grandparents' home in Halifax to show them the new watch she had bought.

Her grandmother had been out when she arrived, so she watched television with her grandfather to await her return at 11 p.m. Tom and Mary Priestley always enjoyed their granddaughter's weekly visit on Sundays, and had been pleasantly surprised by this extra midweek visit. When Jo, as they called her, decided to go home, her grandparents tried to talk her into staying the night, but she preferred to go home.

It was only a ten-minute walk, which she had taken many times before. It was almost midnight. By the time she reached Saville Park, an area of open grassland surrounded by well-lit roads, as she walked across the damp grass in the park, Peter Sutcliffe stopped her to ask the time.

She looked toward the town clock in the distance, and Peter took the hammer from his jacket, crashing it down on the young woman's head. As she lay on the grass, he hit her again, and then dragged her thirty feet back into the darkness, away from the road. He pulled her clothing back and stabbed her twenty-five times.

into her breasts, stomach and thighs, even into her vagina. He left her lying like a bundle of rags. One of her tan shoes still lay at the roadside where his attack had begun. She had been almost in sight of her home when Peter had killed her. The next morning, at 6.30 a.m., a woman waiting at the bus stop found her body and called the police.

Soon after, Josephine's younger brother, David, set off for his early morning paper round. As he neared the park, he saw the police officers huddled around something lying on the ground. Curiosity drew him closer to the scene, where it became apparent what the men were looking at. And then he saw his sister's shoe lying near the roadside. In a panic, he ran home, yelling to his mother as he came into the house.

Josephine's mother ran upstairs to check her daughter's room. Josephine was not there. When she called the Halifax police, they were not able to put to rest her greatest fear. On the night of 1st of September 1979, Barbara Janine Leach went to the Manville Arms with five of her closest friends.

Barbara was a student at Bradford University and lived with a group of students in a house in Groves Terrace, just across Great Horton Road from the university. She had decided not to go home to Kettering, where her parents, Beryl and David Leitch, lived, so she could continue studying before the beginning of her third year of a Bachelor of Science degree.

She had rung her mother earlier that day to wish her father a happy birthday and apologized for not sending him a card. She told her mother that she would be heading home on Monday to spend the week with them. Also at the Manville Arms that night was Peter Sutcliffe. He had seen Barbara from across the other side of the room and had watched her continuously.

At closing time, 11 p.m., he left and waited in his car outside. Barbara, along with her five friends, had stayed behind to help clean up and have a drink with the landlord, Roy Evans. When they finally left at 12.45 a.m., Peter was watching nearby as the group walked toward Great Horton Road.

As they were about to turn left into Grove Terrace, Barbara decided to go for a walk and invited her friend Paul Smith to join her. When he declined the offer, she asked him to wait up for her as she didn't have a key. He agreed and they parted company. As he watched Barbara walk down Great Horton Road alone, Peter started the car and drove down to Back Ash Grove where he parked the car.

With hammer and knife in hand, he got out of the car and walked quickly along the alleyway, knowing that Barbara would soon be walking past at the other end. He waited for her in the shadows of Ashgrove, listening to the echo of her boots on the pavement as she walked toward him. As she passed, he sprang, smashing the hammer into her head. It only took one blow and she was dead.

Quickly, he dragged her lifeless body back into the shadows of the side entrance toward Backash Grove. In the yard behind number 13, he dropped her body and tore at her clothing, exposing her breasts, abdomen, and underpants. He stabbed her eight times, then dragged her body near some rubbish bins and covered her with a piece of old carpet, which lay nearby.

Paul Smits waited for Barbara for over an hour then. Assuming that she had decided to join one of the many parties being held all over the area, went to bed. When she hadn't come home the next morning, he rang her parents and the police. A search began the same day, and her body was found that afternoon. Professor Gee, the pathologist who had worked on all the Yorkshire Ripper cases...

Believe that the knife used to stab Barbara was the same one used on Josephine Whittaker. With the deaths of two victims that were not prostitutes in non-red light areas in a six-month period, the West Yorkshire public were now interested in more than just gruesome stories about Yorkshire Ripper. They wanted action. Why weren't the police doing something to stop this killer who had dared to threaten the lives of decent women?

Since January 1979, when Jack Ridgeway and his men had left Bradford in their search for the owner of the five-pound note found in John Jordan's handbag, they had returned many times to interview employees of firms like Clark's, where Peter Sutcliffe worked. Peter had been interviewed on a number of occasions.

and his workmates had taken to calling him the Ripper, because of the apparent police interest in him. Even as late as 1980, Peter was never considered to be a strong suspect. Despite the fact that he had a gap in his front teeth, his car had been spotted in red-light districts a number of times, he had the right boot size, and his name was on the now dramatically shortened list,

of 300 possible recipients of the £5 note. Inexplicably, none of the men interviewed at this time were given blood tests, nor were any men placed under surveillance or boot sizes checked. The overwhelming reason for why Peter Sutcliffe was not considered a suspect, even after a total of nine interviews with police, was that he had provided alibis verified by Sonia.

and because he did not have a Geordie accent. The Geordie accent clue came from one of the fake tapes sent by Mr. Humble, a frightening indication of how greatly assumptions can prejudice an investigation such as this, limiting the outlook of the investigating officers to the point that they are able to miss vital clues. As Peter waited...

For his impending court appearance, due in January of 1981, he attacked four women, killing two of them. The first attack occurred in the respectable suburb of Farsley, Leeds. His 47-year-old victim, Marguerite Walls, was a civil servant who worked at the Department of Education and Science at Farsley.

She worked late on the night of 20th of August, 1980, as she had wanted to clear her desk before she started her vacation the next day. She left her office building at 10.30 p.m. to begin the short walk home, taking the longest but safest route along well-lit streets. In New Street, as she walked past the entrance to a local magistrate's house,

Peter Sutcliffe jumped out from behind the fence where he had waited for her and hit her on the head with his hammer. Margaret did not fall to the ground as Peter expected her to. Instead, she began to scream, and a second blow to the head did not stop her screaming as she held her now bleeding head. To stop her screaming, he grabbed her by the neck and strangled her.

as he did so he dragged her into the driveway and through the overgrown bushes of the property called clermont by the time he reached the garage deep in the garden marguerite was dead he ripped at her clothes tearing them from her and scattering them around the garden

His anger and frustration at his failure to bring his knife rose with him, and could not be quelled as he rained blows on her body with his hammer. Before leaving her, he covered her body with leaves that had been left in a pile nearby. As he left the garden, he checked that the street was quiet before stepping out from the darkness. Fifteen minutes later, he was safely home.

When Marguerite was found the next morning, only 400 yards from her home, it was soon determined that, although she had been bludgeoned with a hammer, her strangulation ruled her out as a victim of the notorious Yorkshire Ripper. Headingly, home of the world's best cricket fields where World Series test cricket matches are played, was not the type of town anyone would have expected the Yorkshire Ripper to strike.

There were no red-light districts. It was a suburb where students, teachers and media people chose to live for its cosmopolitan atmosphere. But it was here that Peter Sutcliffe attacked Dr. Upadhyaya Bandara, visiting leads from her native Singapore, as part of a World Health Organization scholarship. It was 24th of September when Dr. Bandara made a long walk home after visiting friends in Headingley.

As she walked past the Kentucky Fried Chicken shop, she noticed a man inside. He was staring at her. She walked on past North Lane and then turned right into St. Michael's Lane. As she turned into Chapel Lane, an alley that cut through to Cardigan Road, she was hurled to the ground. Peter Sutcliffe slammed his hammer into her head, rending her unconscious.

He held her around the neck with a ligature to prevent her escape. Upadya Bandara lay bleeding on the ground as Peter picked up her shoes and handbag and took them several yards away. Before he could resume his attack, he heard footsteps and fled. The footsteps belonged to Mrs. Valerie Nicholas, whose house backed onto the laneway. She had heard noises at 10.30 p.m. and had gone out to investigate.

The police in Headingley did not believe that the Yorkshire Ripper had attacked Dr Upadhyaya Bandara, despite the fact that she described her attacker as having black hair, a full beard and moustache. Dr Bandara returned to Singapore to recover. Peter Sutcliffe's next attack, on the 5th of November 1980 in Huddersfield, was also credited to an unknown attacker.

Teresa Sykes, a sixteen-year-old who lived with her boyfriend and their three-month-old son, had been walking home across grassland not far from her home when Peter rained three hammer blows to her head. He had followed her from the minstrel pub, where she had dropped in to see her father, the owner, before he struck her from behind with one of the blows so severe that it went through her skull.

Teresa screamed as Peter struck her. Her boyfriend, Jimmy Fury, watched in horror from their lounge room window. Within seconds, he was running toward Teresa and Peter. When Peter saw Jimmy, he ran back into the darkness of the night. Teresa miraculously survived the brutal attack, but she was never the same again.

After spending several weeks in the neurosurgical unit at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield, Teresa returned home early in 1981. She left Jimmy and returned to live with her parents. Teresa was now afraid of men, and despite their plans to marry, she was even afraid of Jimmy. Her father, who always believed that Yorkshire Ripper had been responsible for his daughter's attack...

said that since the attack her whole personality had changed. Where she was once a happy girl, she was now quick to flare up in anger over the smallest thing. Peter Sutcliffe had left his mark on yet another family. On the night of 17th of November, 1980, Sonia resigned herself to yet another night alone watching television.

Peter had called to tell her he was still in Gloucester, making a delivery, and would not be home until late. What she would not find out until much later was that Peter was not working at all. He had clocked off from Clark's at 7.03 p.m. and headed for Headingley, where he had spent another evening only a couple of weeks earlier. He again ate at the Kentucky Fried Chicken shop,

As he sat looking out of the window at 9.23 p.m., Jacqueline Hill alighted from the number one bus at the stop opposite the Arndale shopping arcade. She was returning home after attending a seminar on the probation service in Cookridge Street, Leeds. Jacqueline was a student at the university who had hoped to join the probation service when she graduated the following summer.

Peter Sutcliffe began to follow Jacqueline after she passed the Kentucky Fried Chicken shop. He was behind her as she entered the dimly lit Alma Road toward the Lupton Flats where she had recently moved. Her mother had been concerned about her living alone on the outskirts of town because of the Yorkshire Ripper attacks, so Jacqueline had decided to move to the Allgirl Flats in Lupton Court.

which was part of a complex of university residences behind the Arndale Shopping Center. Jacqueline was only 100 yards from her home when Peter Sutcliffe struck her on the back of the head. He dragged the lifeless body of Jacqueline Hill 14 yards onto some vacant land just behind the Arndale Shop's car park. Protected from view by trees and bushes, Peter stabbed her repeatedly.

He stabbed her in the eye that had stared up at him accusingly as he tore at her clothes and slashed her naked body. When he had finished, he left her and headed for home. He forgot that Jacqueline's handbag and glasses still lay on the pavement in Alma Road where she had dropped them. Only a short time after the attack, Amir Hussein, an Iranian student...

found the bag as he walked home to Lipton Court. He took it home with him and showed it to his five flatmates, one of whom was an ex-chief inspector with the Hong Kong police, Tony Garston. Tony became alarmed when he saw that nothing had been stolen from the bag and noticed fresh blood spots on the outside of it. At 11.30 p.m., one of the students called the police.

But it was some time before the two investigating officers arrived at the flat. It was only at the insistence of Mr. Hussein that the police finally agreed to search the area where he found the bag. The brief search by torchlight did not uncover Jacqueline's body, and the police left. A worker at the Arndale shops discovered Jacqueline the next morning at 10.10 a.m.,

She was lying less than 30 yards from where police had searched the previous night. Initially, police denied that the Yorkshire Ripper had struck again until David Gee announced his findings. The Ripper had struck again, for what the police wrongly believed to be the first time in 14 months. The attack was widely publicized, with police requesting the assistance of anyone who had been in the area that night.

They were especially interested in talking to the owner of a dark, square-shaped car which had been seen reversing hurriedly down One Way Alma Road. The driver, understandably, did not come forward. With Jacqueline's murder, the real threat of the Yorkshire Ripper was finally brought home to Britain's middle class. No longer was he just killing prostitutes in the seedy parts of town,

So-called innocent women were now acutely aware of the danger to themselves, a danger that prostitutes had been living with for nearly five years. The police were inundated with information from the public. Police in Leeds received 8,000 letters, 7,000 of which were anonymous, most named suspects. One of those unsigned letters was from Trevor Birdsall,

In it, he named Peter Sutcliffe, a lorry driver from Bradford. When police still did not question Peter, two weeks later, Trevor entered the Bradford police headquarters, where he repeated his allegations to the constable on the reception desk. The report was fed into the system, and Peter Sutcliffe continued to walk free. Trevor had been suspicious of Peter for some time before he went to the police.

even as far back as Olive Smelt's attack. But Peter was his friend, whom he didn't think was capable of killing. The police insistence that the Yorkshire Ripper was from the Sunderland area and spoke with a Geordie accent had delayed Trevor's suspicions for a long time. When Trevor heard nothing more from police, he assumed they had followed up with Peter and he had been wrong.

The task force responsible for the investigation into the Yorkshire Ripper murders was not aware of Trevor Birdsall's letter or his report. They had long been buried under the mountain of information that had been accumulated over the past five years. Since Jacqueline Hill's attack, George Oldfield was no longer in charge of the investigation. Jim Hobson had replaced him.

Hobson delivered a full-page message to the force in the December issue of the West Yorkshire Police newspaper. In this message, he asked that all police officers work toward the arrest of the Yorkshire Ripper, committing them to a plan of daily action towards such an outcome.

His statement that, although the Yorkshire Ripper probably had a Geordie accent, police should not eliminate a possible suspect on those grounds, was to prove a vital influence on the arrest of Peter Sutcliffe in January of 1981. Also, in mid-December, Peter Sutcliffe made a trip to Sheffield, an area he had not before visited, during his work as a long-distance lorry driver.

He had gone to the remote depot on the moor north of Sheffield to make a delivery. It should have been a short visit, but the Christmas rush had caused a backlog, and Peter had spent most of the day there. The depot manager remembered him well, because, unlike most of the lorry drivers he knew, Peter had been softly spoken and well-mannered. He did not swear or cuss when told of the delays.

He merely passed the time, chatting to some of the workers in the busy factory. It would be remembered later that he had asked about an area of vacant land close to Sheffield, which could be clearly seen from the heights of the depot. Peter noted how quiet it was in Sheffield. Peter had been so impressed by Sheffield that he returned there again two weeks later, on Friday the 2nd of January 1981,

but this time he was not driving his lorry, and the delivery he intended to make was with his hammer on some woman's head. He left home for the last time at 4 p.m. that very afternoon. 24-year-old Olivia Ravers.

had left her two children, Louise, aged five, and D-Roy, aged three, at home at six o'clock to meet up with her girlfriend Denise Hall, 19 years old, to earn some money from passing punters in Sheffield's red-light district. It was 9 p.m., only moments after the two young women had started patrolling along Warncliffe Road.

when Denise met her first potential client. He was driving a brown Rover 3500 and had pulled up to the curb, but there had been something about his eyes that had disturbed her. Despite his good looks, with her neatly trimmed beard and dark wavy hair, he had frightened her, so she declined his offer of ten pounds. An hour later, the same Rover pulled up to the curb again.

When Olivia looked into Peter's eyes, she did not see what her friend Denise saw. Taking him up on his offer of ten pounds, Olivia climbed into the car. They drove a short distance to Melbourne Avenue and parked in the driveway of the British Iron and Steel Producers Association headquarters. Olivia had often brought her customers up here where it was quiet and isolated.

Perfect for business. Peter Sutcliffe had been unable to become aroused, despite Olivia's many attempts. So they had sat and talked for a while, mostly about Peter. In his pocket were his ball-peen hammer, a piece of rope, and a knife. He was just waiting for an opportunity to get the woman outside. While he waited, Sergeant Robert Ring arrived.

and constable robert hides were driving along melbourne road as part of their general patrol when they saw the dark rover parked in the driveway they had a pretty good idea why they pulled in behind the rover and questioned the couple sitting in the car he said his name was peter williams the dusky woman said she was his girlfriend luckily for olivia

Ring remembered her face. Certain that she was a convicted prostitute with a suspended sentence, he told her to get into the police car. Peter Williams told them he needed to go to the toilet and walked further along the dark driveway. Near the entrance to the building there was an oil storage tank.

It was behind this tank, well out of view of the policeman, that Peter placed his hammer and knife. He hoped they hadn't heard the sound they had made, as he placed them on the ground near the wall. As Peter made his way back to his car, Ring and Hydes had called into the station for a check on Peter's car registration number. Within seconds, the operator at the end of the line said,

and got the information they were looking for through a direct link to the police national computer at Hendon. The registration number on the brown Rover parked in front of them belonged to a Skoda. Both of the officers got out of the car and checked the plates on Peter's car, which were held on with black tape. When they checked, they learned the license number was FHY 400 K.

Peter confirmed this, and he admitted. His real name was Peter William Sutcliffe, and lived at Garden Lane, Heaton, Bradford. He had lied because he didn't want his wife to find out that he had been with a prostitute. Back at the police station in Hamilton Road, Olivia and Peter were placed in separate interview rooms. Peter told them that he had stolen the plates from a car in a scrapyard in Cooper Bridge.

which meant that Peter would have to be transferred to another jurisdiction, just as soon as they found out where Cooper Bridge was. After many calls, they found that Cooper Bridge fell under the jurisdiction of Dewsbury Police Headquarters. They were told an officer would be there in the morning, after 6 a.m., when Ring and Hydes finished their shift. Sonja was called and told that her husband wouldn't be home that night,

and Peter was placed in a cell to sleep the night. Before retiring, Peter asked permission to go to the toilet. While he was there, he placed a second knife in the cistern. As the three officers from West Yorkshire drove towards Sheffield, an officer of the Dewsbury station rang the incident room in Milgarth, the base for the Yorkshire Ripper Inquiry.

It was a routine call, made because of a recent directive from Hobson to all West Yorkshire police that any man found with prostitutes in suspicious circumstances was to be reported to the task police force. At 8.55 a.m., Peter Sutcliffe arrived at Dewsbury Police Station with the West Yorkshire police, where he was transferred into the station's interview room.

Just after 9 a.m., Sonia called and was told that her husband was being interviewed in relation to the theft of car number plates. In the interview room, Peter Sutcliffe chatted with officers about his work as a lorry driver and his love of cars. They noted he had dark frizzy hair, a beard and a gap between his teeth.

The officers were familiar with the five points of reference for the elimination of suspects in the Yorkshire Ripper case, but were not fazed by the lack of a Geordie accent. Peter Sutcliffe lived in Bradford in the heart of Ripper country, and had told them that he had driven to Sunderland many times in his work as a lorry driver. The list of possible cars did not include the brown Rover that Peter was driving at the time of his arrest,

but Peter had told them about his white corsair with a black roof. While being questioned by a detective, it was learned that police had questioned Peter Sutcliffe on a number of other occasions in relation to the Yorkshire Ripper case. He wore a size 8 shoe, maybe even a 7. Detective Sergeant Desso Boyle, an officer of the task force and well-versed with the Yorkshire Ripper case,

had left for dewsbury at lunch time on saturday the sixth of november to question sutcliffe himself during the afternoon a blood test revealed that peter sutcliffe was of the rare b group by six p m that night while not totally convinced that peter sutcliffe was the yorkshire ripper

O'Boyle called into the Milgarth incident room and told his senior officer, Detective Inspector John Boyle, that he would not be clocking off, but would stay with the case. At 10 p.m., Sutcliffe was locked in his cell and had gone to bed. When Sergeant Ring returned to Hamilton Road police station to begin his 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift, he was told that Sutcliffe was still being held at Dewsbury station,

and being questioned by Yorkshire Ripper squad officers. Ring would then make a decision which would have a momentous impact on the Yorkshire Ripper investigation. Sutcliffe had left his car to go to the toilet. Maybe he had left something at the scene. He even recalled hearing a clinking noise. Ring returned to the driveway on Melbourne Avenue to have a look around.

When he shone his torch on the ground by the wall behind the oil storage tank, Ring found the ball-peen hammer and knife that Peter had cautiously left there the night before. A detective superintendent at Sheffield made a call to Detective Superintendent Dick Holland at his home in Elland near Huddersfield.

Holland quickly suppressed the initial excitement he had felt when he was told that it looked like they may have finally caught the infamous Ripper. If it was their man, he wanted to be sure that they did everything right. Holland issued John Boyle with a number of instructions on how to proceed with the investigation and requested that he be briefed at 9 a.m. the following morning at Bradford Police Headquarters.

At 9.30 a.m. on Sunday, the 4th of January, Dick Holland, Sergeant O'Boyle, Detective Chief Inspector George Smith, and Detective Constable Jenny Crawford-Brown arrived at No. 6, Garden Lane, where Sonia Sutcliffe told them that they could search the house. At 10 a.m. they left, taking with them a number of tools, which included ball-peen hammers and Sonia Sutcliffe.

and returned to Bradford Police Headquarters, where police questioned Sonia extensively for 13 hours. Dick Holland had sent Detective Sergeant Peter Smith of the Regional Crime Squad, who had been involved in the Ripper case longer than almost anyone else, to question Sutcliffe in Dewsbury. Throughout the morning, the investigating officers, without overtly mentioning the Ripper attacks...

gleaned as many details of Sutcliffe's movements at the times of the attacks as possible. At the same time, officers behind the scenes were working to gain as much information about Peter Sutcliffe's movements over the past five years as they could, including visits to past employers and making other inquiries in the Bradford area.

By early Sunday afternoon, Peter was beginning to lose the incredible calmness that he had shown throughout the 48-hour ordeal. The police were now sure that they had the right man. When questioned about his movements on the night of Teresa Sykes' attack, on the 5th of November 1980, Sutcliffe told them that he was positive he had arrived home by 8 p.m. Sonia's recollection was different.

She distinctly remembered Peter arriving home at 10 p.m. Although no longer officially in charge of the investigation, George Oldfield was called and told of the news. He quickly made his way to Dewsbury, where he was joined shortly afterwards by other senior officers from the task force. At 2.40 p.m., Peter Sutcliffe was told about the discovery of the hammer and knife

as they continued to question him about the attack on Teresa Sykes. It was then that Peter Sutcliffe sat back in his chair and calmly admitted he was the Yorkshire Ripper. The killer's mask had finally been removed, and the most known unknown man was revealed. Over the next 26 hours, Peter Sutcliffe calmly and with little display of emotion said,

told police officers the gruesome details of the last five years of death and mutilation. The only emotion he showed was when discussing the murder of 16-year-old Jane MacDonald and when police questioned him regarding the murder of Joan Harrison, which he strongly denied. After his confession, Peter Sutcliffe had one request of George Oldfield. He wanted to be the one to tell his wife Sonia.

She was immediately driven from Bradford Police Headquarters to the Dewsbury Station, where George Oldfield met her, before being taken to the interview room to see her husband. Sutcliffe sat at a small table across from Sonia, as he calmly told her the shocking story. When Sonia emerged from the interview room, she appeared to be calm, not revealing what emotions she may have had hidden below the surface.

Police would continue to question her about her husband's movements during the past five years, since the attack on Anna Rogolsky in 1975. After Sutcliffe's official statement had been recorded, a press conference was called.

Eighty journalists packed a small room in which Ronald Gregory, George Oldfield and Jim Hobson sat smiling at the cameras while making the announcement that they believed they had finally caught the Yorkshire Ripper. The elation the police felt was reflected by the abandonment of established procedure in dealing with the press in such a situation.

Although Sutcliffe's name was not actually stated, many details not normally revealed, usually omitted to protect a suspect's defense, were revealed to the public. On Monday, the 5th of January, when Peter Sutcliffe appeared in the magistrate's court in Dewsbury, the question that had plagued the British public for the past five years was answered. Everyone now knew the identity of the Yorkshire Ripper.

The question as to why he had killed 13 women and left seven more so brutalized that they would wish they too had died was answered on Tuesday the 6th of January. Peter Sutcliffe told police that in 1967, at the age of 20, he had heard the voice of God speaking to him as he worked at Bingley Cemetery.

He would claim that he had first heard that voice while digging a grave. He stated that the voice had led him into a cross-shaped headstone, upon which were written the Polish words Jego, Webby and Ego. It was this same voice that had ordered him to kill prostitutes. Police officials were satisfied that Peter Sutcliffe was mentally ill, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

and should be incarcerated in an institution for the insane. Mr. Justice Borham was not as sure as the police, the psychiatrists, the prosecution, and Sutcliffe's defense counsel. They had made their conclusions purely on the basis of what Sutcliffe had told them. It seemed very likely that Sutcliffe could be lying.

Sutcliffe had been heard telling his wife that he might be able to reduce his sentence to as little as ten years if he could convince everyone that he was mad. Boreham informed the Attorney General, Sir Michael Havers, of his decision that Peter Sutcliffe should go to trial before a jury of twelve members of the public.

they would decide whether Peter Sutcliffe was mad or guilty of the crime of murder. The trial would last 14 days, and it would take six men and six women of the jury six hours to make their decision. Like the deliberation of any jury in a murder case, there was much discussion. But unlike in any other case...

This jury did not discuss whether or not Peter William Sutcliffe had committed the crime of murder. It was the responsibility of this jury to determine the true mental state of Peter Sutcliffe. The prosecution had put before them the possibility that Sutcliffe had been lying when he told police about the voice of God, which had ordered him to kill. The defense, with the help of many psychiatrists,

had attempted to prove that the story was true. On Friday the 22nd of May 1981, Peter Sutcliffe stood before the jury, as the jury foreman declared the decision that Peter William Sutcliffe was found guilty of 13 counts of murder. Ten of these twelve men and women believed that Peter Sutcliffe was not insane.

but was in fact an evil and sadistic murderer. Five years of terror and pain for so many women, their parents, relatives, friends, and their 36 children came to a sudden end. Peter William Sutcliffe, the notorious Yorkshire Ripper, was led away from the dock, showing no emotion, to begin his sentence of life imprisonment.

Justice appeared to be served, but the scars would never heal for those who survived the carnage wrought by the hand of one man. Sutcliffe was sent to Broadmoor after being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Even though Sutcliffe is a vicious predator of women, Sutcliffe gets some 30 letters a week from women.

The desperately lonely psychopathic serial killer is effusive in his kindness, and I quote, I won't let anybody down who visits me. I will always give them a really nice visit. I guess I'm a guy who needs friends. In later years, Sutcliffe's visits have dwindled, and he has been the subject of two serious attacks by other inmates, one of them resulting in blinding his left eye.

He has suffered serious illnesses and heart failures, mostly due to being extremely obese. The High Court dismissed an appeal by Sutcliffe in 2010, confirming that he would serve a whole life tariff and never be released from custody. On the 11th of August 2016, it was ruled that Sutcliffe is mentally fit to be returned to prison.

On the 24th of August 2016, he was moved to HM Prison, Franklin, in Durham. I have been your host, Thomas Weyberg Thun. Doing this podcast is a labor of love. But if you do want to support me, it's greatly appreciated. So please, take 30 seconds out of your no-doubt busy schedule and fill out my small questionnaire you will find on my website,

at www.serialkillerpod.wordpress.com and in the description of this episode. Also, I have created a Patreon account that you can find at patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast. Any donation, no matter how small, helps a great deal in order for me to be able to do this podcast. Finally, as always...

If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe to it. Thank you, dear listener, for listening. And join me next time for another tale of serial murder. Good night and good luck. As dawn broke over the seven seas, the pirates of the Crimson Galleons set sail for adventure.

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