Peter Sutcliffe: The Yorkshire Ripper

His first reported attack occurred on 4 July 1975 in Keighly, against Anna Patricia Rogulskyj, and he used what was to become his signature attack style: numerous blows over the head with a ball-peen hammer, followed by a slashing attack with a knife or other sharp instrument. She was attacked outside her own home and, fortunately for her, the arrival of a neighbour on the scene cut short Sutcliffe’s brutal attack, and she survived.

His second attack, a month later, on 46-year old Olive Smelt, followed a similar pattern, and the arrival of a car cut short Sutcliffe’s attack ensuring that she, too, survived. His third attack involved a 16-year old, Tracy Brown, in the Silsden area. Despite similarities in the first two attacks, it took the police three years to establish that these were in fact the first attacks of the killer who came to be called the “Yorkshire Ripper”, so called because of the similarities to “Jack the Ripper”, who had also selected prostitutes as his victims of choice. In the case of Tracy Brown, it was only Sutcliffe’s confession, in 1981, that ever linked him to her attack.

On 30 October Wilma McCann, a 28-year old mother of four children, was not as fortunate as Sutcliffe’s first victims, and he was able to carry out his murderous attack without interruption: her battered body was found yards from her home within hours, yielding semen samples which became the starting point of the mountain of evidence that would eventually be compiled, during the search for the Ripper.

His next victim, 42-year old prostitute Emily Jackson, was attacked with a hammer and knife on 20 January 1976, and police quickly connected her murder to McCann’s, gleaning more forensic evidence, including a Wellington boot imprint on her thigh, inflicted during Sutcliffe’s enraged attack.

In June 1976, prostitute Marcella Claxton survived a hammer attack, and thereafter Sutcliffe did not kill again until February 1977, when Leeds prostitute Irene Richardson became his third victim. Tyre tracks near her body were added to the mounting evidence.

In April 1977, the addition of Bradford prostitute Patricia (“Tina”) Atkinson to the death toll established a glaring victim pattern that had prostitutes in the Northeast terrified of attack, with many working in groups or simply giving up the lifestyle. Media interest was limited up to that point; it was almost as if the wider community were complacent about the attacks, but this changed dramatically in June 1977, when a 16-year old shop assistant, Jayne MacDonald, became the next victim.

Clearly not a prostitute, media interest soared, and the police came under intense pressure to make progress towards catching “The Yorkshire Ripper”, as he now became known. Public response swamped the police with information, at a point when they were scarcely able to process the information they already had. Making sense of this mountain of evidence was no easy task, pre-computerisation, and severely hampered police progress.

Sutcliffe struck again on 9 July, an interrupted attack that meant that Maureen Long survived, giving the police a limited description of her attacker, that further aided the overall forensic picture.

On 1 October 1977 Sutcliffe made a serious error: he paid prostitute Jean Jordan with a brand new £5 note, from his pay packet, before brutally slaying her. Recognising his error, he went back to her body but was unable to find her handbag, at which point he inflicted rage-fuelled, post-mortem damage to her corpse, including almost severing her head. Given the post-mortem trauma inflicted on Jordan, police were not initially convinced that she was a Ripper victim. When her body was discovered some days later, a thorough search unearthed the missing handbag, and investigators went to enormous lengths to trace the origins of the note. This eventually led them to Sutcliffe’s place of work, but he calmly convinced then that he was elsewhere on the night in question, an assertion supported by his wife, Sonia.

Seemingly undeterred by his brush with the law, Sutcliffe struck again, repeatedly, over the next five months, returning to his primary target group of prostitutes: Marilyn Moore in December, who survived the attack and added to the Ripper’s vital statistics, describing him as 5’6” tall, with dark, wavy hair and beard; Yvonne Pearson on 21 January 1978 (whose body lay undiscovered until March); 18-year old Helen Rytka on 31 January, whose body was discovered a week later, and finally, 41-year old Vera Millward, who was attacked in Manchester, after a ten week lull.

Then followed 11 months of inactivity, probably brought on by the deterioration in the health of Sutcliffe’s mother, to whom he was very close, who eventually succumbed to heart disease on 8th November 1978. Devastated, Sutcliffe quelled his murderous rages until 4 April 1979, when he attacked and killed bank clerk Josephine Walker near her home.

Public attention was huge, and vigilante groups were established to protect women from the Yorkshire Ripper. Police were deluged with information, including letters that purported to be from the Ripper, postmarked Sunderland, giving information about potential victims. Unfortunately for the police, forensic tests linked evidence from Josephine Walker’s crime scene to these Sunderland letters and, when an audiotape arrived weeks later, supposedly from the Ripper, police attention was diverted wholly to the search for the person on the tape. Identified by experts as speaking with a Wearside accent, he became known in the media as “Wearside Jack”, and this influenced the direction of all future investigations. This severely hampered their progress in catching Sutcliffe who, despite sharing many physical characteristics with the Ripper, was released after numerous police interviews, as his handwriting and accent did not match the profile of “Wearside Jack”.

On 1 September 1979 Sutcliffe struck again, a Bradford student named Barbara Leach. The fact that she was not a prostitute further inflamed public opinion, and the “Wearside Jack” profile was widely advertised, further hampering any real progress. 47-year old civil servant, Marguerite Walls, bludgeoned and stabbed on 20 August 1980, added further to the fear in the general community, as did the non-fatal hammer attacks on a Singaporean doctor, Upadhya Bandara, and 16-year old Theresa Sykes, in September and early November, respectively. On 17 November, student Jacqueline Hill was not so fortunate; her body was found the following morning, riddled with stab wounds.

Hill was to be the Ripper’s last victim. Over the second half of 1980, police became increasingly sceptical of the accuracy of the “Wearside Jack” profile, and forces were instructed not to discount potential suspects purely on the grounds of their accents.