PETER SUTCLIFFE: THE YORKSHIRE RIPPER

Article BY Nicholas Peacock - Art by NICOLAS CASTELAUX

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The rain falls down on this humdrum town as if it were cursed. Over there a gaudily dressed woman is talking with an eager fraudulent-looking man in a cheap suit, a transaction is taking place. The watcher of this is 16, and he envies the man something awful. He wonders what the price is for this and longs to be able to afford it, through doing odd jobs, maybe stealing. He knows about the birds and the bees, mother taught him that; but there is something else he wants to do to the Eves, at least in theory. The man has captured the woman, they are in the man’s car…they are gone. The boy knows what they are liable to get up to, but the details in his mind are sketchy, unproven, and they need to be proofed. Once that woman goes, another comes and there is another man. He knows him, for he is the shopkeeper from down the road and his name is Ted. That Ted can have this pleasure and he cannot, enrages him, to the point that he wonders what he is capable of. He has heard that murderers can get the death penalty, but not if they aren’t caught; so just don’t get caught. Peter Sutcliffe has decided that prostitutes are prey, but he doesn’t know how to catch them. Not yet. He is too young. But later he must, and he will learn to do it with a terrible and deadly fury.

 

Peter Sutcliffe

Peter was born in 1946 into a working class catholic family in the town of Bingley, Yorkshire, England. He was a loner. Another strange, possibly lost child. It was too early to tell. He left school at fifteen and worked a series of menial jobs. One of his first jobs was as a gravedigger, which is a job someone has to do, but it isn’t really about dead bodies – just digging rectilinear holes. He found better work at the factories, including that of Baird Television, on the packaging line, and at that firm he was asked to become a salesman on the road, a prospect he refused, perhaps out of shyness. It was 1973. Peter worked more menial jobs, and maybe he did have the ambition to better himself, for with redundancy money he trained as an HGV driver. He became one for a firm called T & W.H. Clark (Holdings) Ltd. on the Canal Road Industrial Estate in Bradford. That was the end of the line in his career path.

Here was a man of slightly swarthy complexion, a little over average build. He was a strange man, strange looking, strange aura, someone you might think was out on release from the madhouse, or hopefully the halfway house. If you saw him in the pub, he might be staring into space, lost in thoughts, that you likely did not want to know about. He looked like he might be a psychopath, if you knew what one was. Otherwise, he at least looked like someone you didn’t want to look at. Except, something about him suggested that he might be a coward. And an incident strongly suggested this. One day in a pub, Peter staring into space, a man took exception to him and poured a pint of beer over his head, without any care of retribution. Peter acted as though he did not seem to notice this, or simply shrugged this abuse off, the way you do if you have no courage to confront your assailant. Peter, it seemed, was afraid of men.

Whatever Peter was thinking about women and what he might like to do to them, it cannot have been too obvious, at least not to a decent lady called Sonia Szurma, whom he met in February 1967. By then Peter was not a rapist or a murderer as far as anyone knows. She had mental health problems, and he wasn’t normal. She probably saw in him someone of a sympathetic nature, of her own ilk; mentally ill people don’t have many options for partners, it is catch as catch can. They married in 1974. It would turn out that she couldn’t bear him any children, whether he wanted them or not. She would train to be a teacher. There is little else to report about the dynamic, except that she had an affair with an ice cream van driver. A mentally ill Sonia and a mentally ill Peter, and an ice cream van driver. It was a sad romance, if there was any of it. Whatever Peter may have suspected about his wife’s infidelities wasn’t of much consequence to the marital compact, because he wasn’t really into a marital setup, except for the most basic reasons of company and some financial collaboration. Peter was interested in seeking prostitutes; that was what plagued his mind. Sonia was just a distraction. She could cheat on him, and in fact, her cheating on him was likely good news: she had no excuse to raise any objection about his extramarital activities. Which were about to begin.

 

Attacks & Murders

There are many ways to kill a person, and blunt force trauma is a good one. Hammers are useful in this function, because you can vary the force, to knock a victim unconscious, or simply brain them to death. Knives are of course a tool that no serious killer would go without, as a main or backup weapon.

Peter’s job was objectively inane. But Peter wasn’t into cerebral pursuits. He was probably at least partially insane, becoming the more so. Insane in a functional way, if that is not an oxymoron. He performed his duties, and the work regimen afforded him time for wool-gathering, about prostitutes. His libido was not quite right, since, it was telling him in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t about having sex with prostitutes, but a sexual release from subjecting them to extreme violence, killing them. Added to that, an abiding conviction that they deserved to die. It is possible that he did want to find some sexual/emotional succour from prostitutes, the way many a john does, that had he got this, he could have desisted in his violent tendencies, made peace with the female of the species. That might be a compelling thought, but some men are only content with violently raping women, which is understood to be inherent in society, and some are just interested in hurting women they find sexually attractive, which is less understood.

 

1969

If there is an accepted timeline in the violence perpetrated against women by Peter, then the beginning was on a night in 1969. Heretofore, Peter might have feared prostitutes, but in retrospect, it is unlikely he feared what he might do to them.

If it was fear of them that had prevented him so far from this course of action, he’d conquered it once and for all. He may not have actually intended violence when he approached her, he may have actually just wanted her services; he may have been testing the water. It went wrong, he was fooled, she disappeared with his money. Even a regular john would want some redress for that, if not retribution, and many would be willing to employ some degree of violence, having had their money taken in a scenario that engendered some degree of humiliation, and there was the shame, this caused by a grade of human that should know nothing but shame. And some men do want to project their shame of using prostitutes onto them. Whatever Peter was thinking about that aborted engagement, he was coming to get some payback. It was a few days later that he was in a friend’s van and thought he spotted the prostitute in question and asked his friend to stop so he could pursue. The woman he had spotted was a well-known prostitute, but perhaps not the same one, and that may have been irrelevant. He chased her down to a garage and hit her on the head with a stone in a sock, and whether he intended to kill her or not is unknown. She was quite badly injured but she managed to get the number plate and report the incident to the Police. They came the next day and questioned him and he claimed that he had only hit her with his fist. He was lucky, for strangely, she refused to press charges; furthermore, her violent boyfriend was in prison for assault.

 

Interlude

It was sometime before Peter committed his next assault. It might have been because he was genuinely scared of apprehension by the police, of being attacked by a prostitute or her pimp, or partner. Or maybe he wanted to think things through more and avoid mistakes. It was a down time; more wool-gathering. If he wanted kill them, he would have to work out how you did it properly. Without being seen. Where to put them. One thing he knew, was that quite a lot of people didn’t like him, especially women, young women. He had known this from early on. He knew this from the back of his conscious. Because people’s faces tell you whether you’re in or out. His fell intentions would show betimes, his face a horrid picture, that ruffled the soul, and made you wish that you’d never set eyes on such a specimen; and where was the justice in people like that sharing the world with those who meant no harm!

To keep up the pretence of being a dutiful husband to Sonia while considering bashing women to death, cannot have been a mean feat. But she wasn’t really very switched on. Q.E.D. – she married such a man, and he didn’t manage to frighten her away. If he wanted to, he could be fairly normal, at least by the standards of a mentally ill wife. He had a comfortable platform in this arrangement from which to pursue his attacks. From his homestead with his wife, he could set forth into the hunting grounds, after prostitutes, like a mythical beast. Knowing that Sonia knew nothing of his exploits might have thrilled him; his secret life as a prostitute killer in counterpoint to the pretence of being a dutiful husband. Peter could have a dual life. Pretend to acquaintances he was a regular, working man, actually quite a good sort, despite the fact that he looked like the sort of person that would creep out even an old lady walking down a dark and empty alley.

 

1975

Using a stone in a sock hadn’t been a great form of bludgeon. Now the hammer. And now that backup knife. It was the night of the 5th of July in Keighley, a town in the metropolitan borough of the city of Bradford. He saw her from behind, walking down an empty street. Empty is the cue. The perfume in the slipstream of the gentle breeze maddening. He didn’t need to think it through. It was go, go, go. He closed in on her and smashed her head with the hammer. Under the hammer blows she screamed. It just made him keen. He slashed her stomach. Her name was Anna Rogulskyj. Whether she was a prostitute is unclear, as is whether he thought her one. During these frenzied ministrations, he was disturbed by a resident and fled, a dark maniac bounding though the streets from the aborted crime. Anna did survive after extensive medical intervention.

Peter’s job as a HGV driver took him far and wide, which made his hunting all the more of an adventure. That year he also attacked two more using that modus operandi without killing them: Olive Smelt in Halifax in August; also in August, 14-year-old Tracy Browne in Silsden. Both victims suffered terribly, physically and emotionally.

 

Fatality

It was only a matter of time before Peter’s work led to a fatality, because hitting people on the head with hammers and stabbing them is apt to result thus. But maybe a bit more enthusiasm was required, some proper zeal. On the 30th of October that year, it was Wilma McCann. She was a mother of four, whose social status is unclear. She was struck twice with the hammer and stabbed 15 times in the neck and abdomen. That was enough, probably more than enough, but you had to be sure, and it wasn’t over just because they were dead or dying. There was no remorse, no need for that. Killing people was the greatest thrill on earth, no matter what other people said, not that he cared about what other people thought or said. He was aware that some other people enjoyed this special pleasure, but it seemed he was almost alone in perpetrating it at this time and in this street scene.

 

Peter the Great

He must have felt a sense of pride, as you do when you pull something arduous off, when everything goes to plan, when you can finally say, I made my bones, at this or that. He’d made his by smashing skulls and stabbing people, but which was the better? His attacks focused on the blows to the head, with the knife just a secondary option it seemed. He knew the details of that. He was a killer, whose desire to kill more was unquenchable. This was what he was born to do, nothing else was worthy of his interest. If his career adviser had asked him what he wanted to do in later life, he might have told them he wanted to drive a lorry, or be a builder; but he might have sniggered at this, when he considered the truth – kill young women, like the one who was asking him those pointless questions. He didn’t really want to have sex with them; because that was what he despised about them, their filthy behaviour. That’s what the Catholic Church would have said of them. He would masturbate while thinking about them, while sitting on the toilet. But he could never really consider inserting his penis into their bodies; for a start, it would be limp. No, just kill them was more than ample satiation for this sick superman.

In the waking hours either side of sleep, he played over the modus of killing the bitches, like an actor might run over his lines. He thought he was getting his act together now, like a budding stage star. You found the right victim, something you knew instinctively, then you strode up behind her, fast as you could without your footfalls sounding, a last check for company, witnesses, then hit them on the head, and again, again, and if they kept it up, made any noise you stabbed them, as much as you liked. You had to be furtive as a mouse, as vicious as a tiger. Either that, or it was game over.

Peter was thinking about prostitutes the way a fisherman reads the seas; striving to understand the haunts. To the point of derangement, like that crazy whaler Ahab. There were too many prostitutes and loose young women out there and that was one of the things that really upset him. There were horrible fat ugly ones, older ones. But what also really upset him was how attractive some of the younger ones were, sweet pusses, who men would treat with far too much respect, even if they were ultimately just disgusting whores. Young attractive women could have what they wanted, because men would give it to them, and it was truly disgusting the lengths men would go to do so. Young attractive women and he were living in parallel worlds, because they weren’t interested in him; they would turn their faces away as the Parisians did when the N.A.Z.I.s occupied. They could shun him, but he could kill them, with impunity.

 

1976

Leeds now. More hunting grounds from home. Emily Jackson was old enough to be a Brothel-marm. She was 42 and in dire financial straits. She had a bit of initiative though, with her mobile bordello, a van in which to service clients. How she advertised it is not known here, but surely Peter would have known the signs of such an outfit, known them well, and from some way off. Maybe she advertised her services in the obvious manner, with a little red slutlamp, maybe some rocking motion of the van spoke its purpose loud and clear, and maybe that was the way she wanted it, or maybe it was just known about amongst the johns. He found her and came knocking, knocking her unconscious, stabbing her 51 times, then the hammer some more; and now a screwdriver was added to his toolbox. He also stamped on her thigh with great force, leaving an imprint. She survived. But do you really survive such a horrible ordeal?
Later that year, he attacked 20-year-old Marcella Claxton in Roundhay Park, Leeds. She was four months pregnant. She survived but miscarried, perhaps from the physical trauma or the horror of the ordeal, maybe a bit of both. Was that the sort of killing Peter had in mind? Probably not; it was the mother he wanted dead.

Here was a trajectory then. Plenty of prey out there and no sign that they, or any of their would-be protectors were taking steps to mitigate the threat he posed. He may not have received much intelligence on the fate of those he attacked, whether they were outright dead, fatally injured, merely in a very bad way by which to remember the ordeal. But he must have intended death, and known that he was doing the right sort of thing to achieve it. But the human body, that of a young woman, can be remarkably resilient.

By this time, Sonia wasn’t really of much interest to him sexually, because he couldn’t bring himself to harm her or kill her. If he did anything to her, he was bound to get caught. No murderous violence, no erection. Anyway, she wasn’t really his type of prey. At nights while they slept together like husband and wife, his thoughts and dreams about those women out there on the streets. Dreams of coming up behind them in a perfect scenario, the hammer’s blow. He would twitch as a dog does while it chases imaginary rabbits, and he would make sounds of delight at the successful conclusion of his foray. Sometimes the dreams would be nightmares in which the women would elude him, get the better of him, their pimps beating him up. A dream in which an ostensibly attractive young woman, turned around to reveal the countenance of his mother, who rounded on him, landing blows to his cowering form, execrating him in her piercing manner, screaming at him, calling him a wicked son, a crazy pervert that should be castrated and hanged. Then his sweating, shuddering, crying, to which, Sonia would attempt to comfort him, unaware of the nature of this malaise. Sonia must have been a particularly strange woman to want the company of a man like Peter, for she wasn’t actually technically retarded.

 

1977

Irene Richardson was a prostitute from Chapeltown in Roundhay Park. On the 5th of February, she was bludgeoned to death and her corpse mutilated with the knife. Now there were tire tracks and these were recorded by the Police, who were taking an increasing interest in this spate of attacks on women, which was obviously out of the norm. It can be imagined that the Police assumed that the attacks were specifically aimed at prostitutes; that even if some victims weren’t prostitutes, the perpetrator took them as such. At this time, many men considered women who dressed seductively to be quasi-prostitutes, and there were plenty of violent mishandlers of prostitutes, women in general, and some violent rapists, as is ever the case when bad people think they can get away with it. And there were many women who simply accepted the misogynistic world, some of them, that they might be raped and that the Police wouldn’t take them seriously, or simply dismiss them as drunken harlots. Paradoxically, the police may have taken reports of rape far more seriously if they did come from prostitutes, for though most Policemen (and the vast majority of the Police force were men), though they might have had an underlying loathing for prostitutes, did accept that they were at the coalface, that they did know what they were doing and the difference between being raped and paid for sex was incontestable. Despite mounting violence, the rumors, it was still worth the risk for the streetwalkers. And young women looking for a night out in their gladrags were still fairly unperturbed.

Two months later, another prostitute, Patricia "Tina" Atkinson, from Bradford. Killed in her flat. And here, a bloody boot print. Then, two months later, on the 26th of June, 16-year-old Jayne MacDonald was killed in Chapeltown. Poor Jayne was not a prostitute. It was becoming clear to the Police, then the general public, that all women were potential victims. Though it must have been fairly understood that it wasn’t women who were vulnerable per se, but young women who had some degree of sex appeal, to someone or more than one, with a deranged libido. Barren older women could probably rest assured that they were not on the menu of this sex beast.

The picture was now coming together and young women, and especially prostitutes, were starting to get concerned for their safety. But prostitutes in their tragic, disastrous career, do seem to carry on regardless, as if they have some kind of deathwish. They need the money in ways that surely baffle those who abominate the idea of such a way of life, for their needs are often dire, hopeless, their problems insoluble via any other employment. Whatever their idea of risk reward, they come out fair weather or foul, like fishermen driven by mysterious forces unknown and unknowable to those who shun that treacherous line of work. Some fishermen will say they have saltwater in their veins, quite; but what would a prostitute say must be in theirs? Sex? What would Peter say? Probably, pure rage.

July, another assault in Bradford. Maureen Long. He was interrupted in his ministrations and fled. A witness noted his car, but was erroneous, and subsequently, the Police were led on a long wild goose chase. They weren’t really very good at dealing with this sort of crime; not yet anyhow.

The 1st of October. Now Manchester. Prostitute Jean Jordan. Her body was found ten days after the ferocious attack in wasteland behind a cemetery, having been removed from another location several days after death. (Peter later confessed that he had realised that the £5 note he had given her was traceable and had returned to retrieve it. But failing to find it, he mutilated the body.) So, Peter had bothered to pay this one, but what for? Her death? The following morning, Bruce Jones, a local dairy worker, was tending his allotment when he made the discovery. The £5 note, hidden in a secret compartment in Jordan's handbag, was traced to branches of the Midland Bank in Shipley and Bingley. Police analysis of bank operations allowed them to narrow their field of inquiry to 8,000 workers who could have received it in their wagepackets. Over three months the Police interviewed 5,000 men, including Sutcliffe. The Police found that the alibi given for Sutcliffe's whereabouts was credible, he had indeed spent much of the evening of the killing at a family party. Weeks of investigation led to nothing, leaving Police officers frustrated that they collected an important clue yet failed to utilize it. But did someone in the Police force not glean from Peter’s deportment, that he seemed, just a little bit odd? Maybe, but that wasn’t going to go anywhere.

On the 14th of December Peter attacked Marilyn Moore, another prostitute, from Leeds. She survived and provided police with a description of her attacker. Tire tracks found at the scene matched those from an earlier attack. The net was certainly tightening, but oh so slowly.

 

1978

Now the Police were starting to get their act together, or at least feeling that it was becoming imperative that they must. But they were still very much behind the curve, Peter firmly ahead of them, as he might have known. Peter had been interviewed and discounted and so he must have felt he was too smart for his adversaries, thus emboldened. Now there was a ‘Ripper Squad’ for it was a ripper judging by the mess he’d made of his victims.

January that year. Here is another young prostitute who walks a rainy street, and she must have heard about this monster who is out to get people like her, maybe he has his eye on her specifically. The other working girls had been talking about him, in many lurid versions. He is a tall, dark man, who runs up behind you as you are unawares, smashes your head in and rapes your dead body; he is actually a policeman who hates prostitutes, who breaks your neck in an instant; he is a handsome, charming man who treats you right, then cuts your throat; he is 18, 25, 30, 35, 40, 50, etc. She has heard all this. She is such a cliché, in tell-tale attire, that she looks like she’s trying to lure this ‘Ripper’; leopard-pattern leggings, a cerise miniskirt, mantled with a fake ermine coat, her hair, long, wet and messy. Is Peter about? If so, he’s is going to bite on this lure. He looks as much the cliché of the rapist, or ripper, as she his perfect prey. Here is Peter with his pair of bovver boots, tight black jeans, a loose-fitting black leather jacket; and his face is long unshaven. He walks with a deadly purpose; a man that should clear the streets of those young women who saw him in time.

Yvonne Pearson, 21, was killed and hidden under a discarded sofa on some wasteland. Her body was not discovered till March. That month he killed three more times.

 

1979

This was an interlude year. His mother had died in November the year previous. His mother had known him all too well. Dreams featuring her and prostitutes had been abating, and when she died, they stopped. She must have wondered what sort of son she had produced as much as he wondered what she knew about his horrible ways.

By now Peter must have known that the good times were coming to an end. The prostitutes were keeping off the streets, were in company of other prostitutes or men. Prostitutes hadn’t been much valued in society, which he knew, and that was what he likely surmised was why he could get away with it so easily. In that sense, he may have considered himself as doing society a favour. But there was a lot of fuss about the killings now, and it seemed that prostitutes had gone up in the world, at least come to be seen as human, which must have enraged him. Given this, in his reckoning he cannot have believed he would get away with this for much longer. If he was going to get caught, he might as well make the most of the opportunities before the Police finally learnt how to find him.

On the 4th of April, he killed Josephine Whitaker, a 19-year-old. He’d left evidence, which was now forensic evidence, and certainly D.N.A., but that was of no use back then. The Police were coming under serious pressure to deal with this case. It was becoming ridiculous, that such terror could be allowed to carry on, burgeon, and that likely it was at the hands one person. Why couldn’t they find this man, who should have stood out like a sore thumb. He must have been deranged, completely dysfunctional, a dead ringer for a maniacal murderer; how could they be so elusive! The ‘Yorkshire Ripper’, rampaging about, unchecked was a constant feature in the news and with every attack and murder, the fear ratcheted up, as did the pressure on the Police.

 

Wearside Jack

The Police in their powerlessness came to receive a taped message purporting to be from the murderer. It was taunting of Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield, who was leading the investigation. The tape contained a man's voice: "I'm Jack. I see you're having no luck catching me. I have the greatest respect for you, George, but Lord, you're no nearer catching me now than four years ago when I started."

Consequently, the plot thickened somewhat; now they were dealing with someone who, if he was the killer, was not only a monster, but one proud of his achievements, who liked to play games. There was the accent which interested them, which was deemed to be ‘Wearside’, an area of Sunderland. This person may well have been considered the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’, but he was dubbed ‘Wearside Jack’; they must have considered that there were people out there capable of such perverted courses of action as to hoax. Whomever this deranged man was, he wasn’t content with the tape, for sent the Police two letters boasting of his involvement in the crimes, signed “Jack The Ripper”. In them he claimed responsibility for the murder of 26-year-old Joan Harrison in Preston in November 1975.

It should not have surprised the Police that a serial killer out there was aware of the notorious London ripper, that such a sick and depraved individual might have taken some interest in his work, wanted to emulate him. It would be compelling to believe that some people were inspired to their murderous ways by another, rather than freshly made.

On the 1st of September, Sutcliffe murdered 20-year-old Barbara Leach, a Bradford University student. He partially buried her body under a pile of bricks at the rear of a building near the University. Another murder of a woman who wasn’t a prostitute. If this continued, it would become a national emergency. It had to stop. The failures of the Police force were simply unacceptable. The issue had been moving up the chain of command at a sluggish pace, and now senior heads could role.

The Police were of course well aware of Peter Sutcliffe, and slowly as the evidence came together, and a profile of the killer took form, there must have been a finger pointing at him, if not a number of others. There was his connection with the attack in which his friend’s van’s number plate was used to track him down, that £5 note. He was interviewed nine times. It may well have been that Peter wasn’t the strangest person in the area, that he was in fact just one of a number of horrible men who had the characteristics of rapists, were rapists, murderers, like the many already in jail. But Peter wasn’t just any rapist or murderer – he thought he was quite special. But given their resources, they needed to catch this man in the act, and then the forensic evidence could come into play.

 

1980

In April 1980 Sutcliffe was arrested for drunk-driving. While awaiting trial, he killed two more women. He murdered 47-year-old Marguerite Walls on the night of the 20th of August, and 20-year-old Jacqueline Hill, a student at Leeds University, on the night of the 17th of November. Hill's body was found in the grounds of the Lupton Residences. Peter also attacked three other women who survived.

The net was closing again. On the 25th of November Trevor Birdsall, an associate of Sutcliffe, reported him to the Police as a suspect but the information vanished into the mass of paperwork already created, and there were many people being reported, for myriad reasons. But there was now enough in the reports that even the bumbling Police could not ignore the name Peter Sutcliffe. But it seems Police procedure worked in ways that had negated character profiling as it is now employed, that the man who made the skin of women crawl, was just another name to be worked through the bureaucracy. Maybe if they’d had more (any) female Police officers, maybe if they had a better relationship with prostitutes, they could have made crucial deductions far sooner. Peter was at the end of his game now, whether he had guessed so or not. Irrespective, he did want to kill as though it were the last chance he’d ever have.

 

Peter Caught

On the 2nd of January 1981 Peter was with a 24yr old prostitute named Olivia Reivers, in the driveway of a property in Sheffield. The Police officers were intent on arresting him. They may have thought he was the fabled ‘Yorkshire Ripper’, maybe just another punter availing himself at a time when the prostitutes were, despite the terror, still on the game. Desperate now, they were going to take these men on, not least because soliciting was a crime (though one much overlooked at the time).

When the Police checked the number plates of Peter’s car, they were proven to be false, and Peter was taken to Dewsbury Police Station for questioning. Now it was another time to question him in respect of the person dubbed the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’. Peter was the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ and probably proud of such an infamous moniker. He was famous, yet anonymous really. During the questioning, he was evasive, and to a good D.I., this can tell them much of the truth. Yes, he could have been ashamed of his activities, feared a wife or girlfriend might have found out. But there was something about him that signaled that here was someone up to much worse things than having a bit of sex on the side. Many Police officers mayn’t have seen into the eyes of serial killer, but you could tell that here was someone you might imagine them to resemble.

Demeanor was not enough to arrest someone for the heinous crimes in question. He was considered a person interest. They thought so enough to return to the scene of the arrest to search for evidence and there they found a canvas bag containing what would seem to be a kit for assault/murder/rape: a knife, a hammer, some rope, in a canvass bag. When Peter was confronted with this, he asked to use the lavatory, and allowed to, he secreted another knife in the cistern, which was later found.

The Police were now fairly confident that they had the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’. Sonia was brought in for questioning.

Peter was strip-searched by the Police, and they found and interesting garb about him: he was wearing a V-necked sweater upside down as if a pair of trousers, and the V-area exposed his crotch. More and more they were coming to the certain conclusion that they had caught their man, or least someone responsible for some of the crimes; why couldn’t there be multiple killers, maybe independent or in a team? At this point, Peter must have realized that his hopes of evading justice were pretty slim, yet, he still held out for two days of questioning. But the game was up, he admitted to the crimes. And now Peter Sutcliffe was a name to become as notorious as the given moniker.

Peter Sutcliffe was charged that year, at Dewsbury Magistrate’s court, with 13 counts of murder. He pleaded not guilty to that set of charges, but relied on a lesser charge of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. With that proviso, he could make wild claims tending towards voices, from God, the Devil, his mother, and as it turned out, from a dead Polish man named Bronislaw Zapolski, who he claimed had told him that prostitutes were God’s enemies and deserved to die; this from the headstone of the dead man. It certainly sounded insane. It could be then that Peter was a paranoid schizophrenic, and if so, he would be granted the defense. If so, he wasn’t going to be walking the streets again in his remaining life, but he might get a nicer institutional abode.

He then plead guilty to seven counts of attempted murder before a trial judge. The prosecution, were going to accept his plea of diminished responsibility, after four psychiatrists diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. But the judge, Mr Justice Boreham, demanded a much more detailed report on the defendant’s mental state. It was not looking good for this madman pretender.

Peter was judged to be sane at this preliminary stage and a trial proper set, to commence on the 5th of May 1981

During the two week trial his counsel James Chadwin QC, tried to pursue the cause of serious mental illness on Peter’s part, but he was found guilty of murder on all counts and was sentenced to twenty concurrent sentences of life imprisonment. The trial judge said Sutcliffe was beyond redemption, and hoped he would never leave prison. He recommended a minimum term of 30 years to be served before parole could be considered meaning Sutcliffe would have been unlikely to be freed until at least 2011.

After his trial, Sutcliffe admitted two other attacks. It was decided that prosecution for these offences was "not in the public interest". West Yorkshire Police made it clear that the victims wished to remain anonymous.

 

Incarceration

Peter began his sentence at HMP Parkhurst on the 22nd of May 1981. Here he was now in a regular prison, and in here he was amongst the violent men he had long feared, who, in their own arcane system of judgment, regarded a prostitute killer as a degenerate, a form of prey himself. It was a very unpleasant experience and the knowledge that it was going to last for at least 30yrs compounded the day to day ordeal greatly. In here, he wasn’t exactly being bludgeoned with hammers or stabbed like the victims, resulting in his being in here, but violence was in the air, and he could be seriously hurt in an instant. He wasn’t the sort of person who could form allegiances that would help him ward off the hostile. He was either feared or reviled.

His burning desire in Parkhurst was pitifully humble by the standards of those on the outside: get a binding diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and get into a mental asylum for the rest of his miserable days. He was persistent, and did get another diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, but in the interests of the general public, who would have been horrified to learn that Peter had won some kind of reprieve, attempts to send him to his desired institution were blocked.

It was only a matter of time before some ultraviolent inmate decided to target Peter. In most prisons, there are ways and means of staging an assault on someone you seriously despise. On the 10th of January 1983, James Costello, a 35-year-old a career criminal thug, followed Peter into the recess of the hospital wing and plunged a broken coffee jar twice into the left side of his face, creating four wounds requiring 30 stitches. It was a taster of what he knew he had to expect, and once it started, it could only get worse. He couldn’t really defend himself, not against men; thus, he was to become a victim, in an environment where they are rounded on and destroyed.

Peter must have thought he’d reached Hell before his carnal demise. But there was a scanty miracle: in March 1984 he was sent to Broadmoor Hospital, under Section 47 of the Mental Health Act 1983. His knowledge of Broadmoor Hospital was likely very limited, and maybe he had fantasies of a more sympathetic approach to the…patients. He would be a patient in there. He might have imagined sessions with psychiatrists who took a great interest in him, treated him as a victim of some process out of his control, elided blame. A friendly psychiatrist, who extended his understanding to someone as complex and profound as him, a shoulder to cry on. There would be drugs to numb. There might be leisure time, therapeutic walks in the grounds. Surely no violence in there. At this time, Sonia had expressed her intention to divorce him, which was not surprising at all, but he cannot have cared much given that he wasn’t ever going to see her again, and anyway, things were looking quite rosy. (She obtained a divorce in April 1994.)

Life in Broadmoor Hospital is quite different from that in HMP Parkhurst for sure, but it isn’t what Peter might have envisioned. Not a walk in the park. It isn’t technically a prison, and it isn’t technically a ‘madhouse’, somewhere in between. It is actually a Secure Psychiatric Unit. But really, it is a madhouse. You don’t get into Broadmoor for trying to cut your wrists, overdosing, even smothering your baby to death due to post-natal depression. Broadmoor is for killers, ultraviolent and other criminals who are deemed too mentally ill to cope in the regular prison system, or maybe the reverse. Some of them have evaded the latter through clever pleas of insanity, mostly though they are in there because they are truly insane. You might find Broadmoor is a safer institution than somewhere like Parkhurst, but if you aren’t actually insane, the likelihood is that you will become so, and you may experience violence in there to boot.

On the 23rd of February 1996, Peter was attacked in his room in the Henley Ward, by Paul Wilson, a convicted robber, who asked to borrow a videotape before attempting to strangle him with the cable from a pair of stereo headphones. Two other clinically insane convicted murderers, Kenneth Erskine and Jamie Devitt, intervened on hearing his cries. And there was another attack, by fellow inmate Ian Kay on the 10th of March 1997, in which Peter was stabbed with a pen and lost the vision in his left eye. So, it was actually just as violent, if not more so, than Parkhurst. Maybe he wanted to return, but he wasn’t going anywhere soon. He was a monster in the public eye, whose hidden suffering was imperative.

Criminals of Peter’s nature, are sometimes let out to see the burial of their loved ones, close relatives only. His father died in 2004 and was cremated. On the 17th of January 2005, he was allowed to visit Grange-over-Sands where the ashes had been scattered. The outside world must have seemed strange, knowing that you were essentially denied it forever.

Back in Broadmoor, life was a mixture of drug-numbed monotony, with occasional psychiatric engagement. There was the background noise of the mad venting their sickness. And there was the terror of mass insurrection, though quickly put down by the orderlies. The mad don’t shut up for long, and you are in a milieu of utter torment, either tormented by your own madness or by that of others.

More violence. On the 22nd of December 2007, Sutcliffe was attacked by Patrick Sureda, who lunged at him with a metal cutlery knife shouting "You fucking raping, murdering bastard, I'll blind your fucking other one". Sutcliffe flung himself backwards and the blade missed his right eye, stabbing him in the cheek.

Peter was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He was going to get this sort of treatment wherever he was sent; in here, in a regular prison, and what would they do to him if, heaven forbid, he was let back out on the streets! It was Hell for sure. So, you went to Hell after all, for murdering poor young women for your sexual gratification, and was it worth it? It mattered not now.

Given that nothing could be worse than the madness and violence of Broadmoor, Peter may have felt grateful that, on the 17th of February 2009, he was deemed "fit to leave Broadmoor", and continue his whole life tariff in prison. But this was challenged in Parliament, and he was staying in Broadmoor, for now. He was now intent of challenging the tariff and launched an appeal, for a minimum term to be set, offering the possibility of parole. This was heard by the High Court of Justice on the 16th of July 2010. It was decided that he should never be released.

 

Mr Justice Mitting stated

“This was a campaign of murder which terrorized the population of a large part of Yorkshire for several years. The only explanation for it, on the jury's verdict, was anger, hatred and obsession. Apart from a terrorist outrage, it is difficult to conceive of circumstances in which one man could account for so many victims”

Psychological reports describing his mental state were taken into consideration, as was the severity of his crimes. Barring judicial decisions to the contrary, it is assumed that Peter will spend the rest of his life in Broadmoor.

In December 2015 Sutcliffe was again assessed as being "no longer mentally ill". In August 2016, a medical tribunal ruled that he no longer required clinical treatment for his mental condition, and could be returned to prison. There were reports that Peter had been transferred from Broadmoor to Frankland Prison in Durham in August 2016.

 

Criticism of the Police

West Yorkshire Police were heavily criticized for being inadequately prepared for an investigation on the required scale. It became one of the largest investigations by a British police force. They had no computers and information on suspects was stored on handwritten index cards, making cross referencing very difficult, leaving crucial clues unbeknown to those who might make the connections leading to a slim chance of apprehension. With all the paperwork, accessing it, there was a huge impasse. Sutcliffe was interviewed nine times, suggesting he not only fitted the bill, but that one or more policemen had suspicions about him.

Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield was criticized for being too focused on the confessional tape that seemed to indicate a perpetrator with a Wearside background. It should have been suspected as a hoax and set aside.

 

Epilogue

Peter, whether in Broadmoor or regular prison still dreams about lone women in seductive attire, walking down the empty street. He comes up behind them, hand on a hammer concealed under his jacket, poised to deliver the coup de grace. Unlike in his incipient dreams of violence when all went to plan, the woman turns around and it is a man wielding an axe, who will kill Peter for sure. His mother is back in his dreams, as a lone woman, whom he attempts to attack and she too wields a weapon, her face a contorted mask of collected vengeance of all the women he’s hurt and killed. She chants Hell, Hell, Hell at her son, and he believes now that he is certain to go thus, from this one to the next.

The man known as ‘Wearside Jack’ wasn’t Peter Sutcliffe at all. His name was John Samuel Humble, an unemployed alcoholic. Extraordinarily, given the interval, on the 20th of October 2005, he was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice for sending the hoax letters and tape. He was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison.

The ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ had been accused of the murder of Joan Harrison. He denied this vehemently. And despite the misgivings of the Police, it turned out that he was telling the truth. It was much later proven through D.N.A. analysis, that the real killer was another sex maniac named Christopher Smith.