The Yorkshire Ripper

Between 1975 and 1981 Peter Sutcliffe killed thirteen women and severely injured seven others in horrific attacks in Northern England. The attacks betrayed Sutcliffe's real nature as a deeply disturbed man, a nature hidden to his wife and both of their families.

Sutcliffe's attacks actually began early in 1975 when he attacked women on two separate occasions with a hammer, but the police didn't link them to the other attacks until years later. It was later in the year and then in January 1976 when two women were killed in very similar circumstances that the police knew they were chasing someone who had already killed twice in very disturbing ways.

The first woman he killed was drunk after a night out in Leeds. He then killed several prostitutes, so the prostitutes in the area started to go around in couples and make notes of clients' car registration numbers. Cooperation between prostitutes and police was not good though, and general public awareness of the crimes remained low until June 1977, when the newspapers reported that an "innocent" young woman had been viciously killed. In fact four other women had been killed between the first and this latest one. The press and public had not shown much sympathy for the victims of the killings so far because the victims were thought to be all prostitutes. They had not yet linked these murders to the first two attacks, which were not on prostitutes.

Once the news of the latest murder got out, the police were drowned in information.

Some of Sutciffe's victims survived, though they were often disabled for life or suffered depression following the attack. One woman attacked in Bradford in 1977 had major surgery and six weeks in hospital before she was able to go home. The following year she appeared in court charged with stealing from shops because she couldn't make ends meet.

The police were thrown off course by some anonymous letters and later a tape from Sunderland which claimed to be from the killer. The speaker on the tape had a geordie accent and police later issued instructions to their forces that they should be looking for someone with a geordie accent.

I remember hearing about the Yorkshire Ripper at the end of the 70s and 1980-81. In November 1980 Sutcliffe killed a woman who was studying at Leeds University. Around this time I was at university in London and I remember women marching at night in "Reclaim the Night" protests.

Sutcliffe wasn't very careful to hide his tracks when committing the murders and over the years left several clues which detectives followed up, but they never got anything that would single him out and they were not good enough at handling the information (computers were in their very infancy) to piece together the bits that they had. They were also distracted by the hoax letters and tape. Sutcliffe had given the police alibis that were backed up by his wife. A friend that visited red light districts with Sutcliffe had written to the police and got no response. In the end it was just luck that he was stopped in a car with a prostitute and the policeman who stopped him radioed in the registration number of Sutcliffe's car. It was still lucky that one officer was sharp enough to go back to the scene where Sutcliffe had been picked up, because that officer found a ball-pin hammer and a knife, weapons that Sutcliffe used in the attacks.

Extensive article about The Yorkshire Ripper at the Crime Lab