Peter Sutcliffe: The Yorkshire Ripper

On 2 January 1981, Sutcliffe, calling himself Peter Williams, was arrested whilst in a car with a prostitute, Olivia Reivers, when police ran a check on the car’s licence plates and found them to be false. Before being taken away, he asked to be allowed to urinate, disappearing behind a storage tank before being driven away.

At the police station he admitted that his name was Peter Sutcliffe, and he was detained overnight. Police, recently made aware of the doubts about the “Wearside Jack” profile, noted Sutcliffe’s physical similarity to the Ripper profile, and became aware of previous investigations made by other police forces. A blood test also proved that he had blood group B, one of the indisputable forensic details, and relatively rare in the general population.

On a hunch, one of the officers who had arrested Sutcliffe decided to return to the scene of his arrest, where he discovered a ball-peen hammer and knife near the spot where Sutcliffe had relieved himself, and the Ripper task force were quickly alerted to this development. When told of the discovery of the weapons, Sutcliffe calmly admitted to being the Yorkshire Ripper, providing an emotionless account, over the next 26 hours, of the grisly 5-year murder spree he had committed. He claimed that the voice of God had commanded that he kill prostitutes, back when he had been a gravedigger at the age of 20. Finally, after confessing all, he requested that he be allowed to inform his wife, Sonia, of his actions.