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Peter Sutcliffe: The Yorkshire Ripper

Yorkshire Ripper: Peter Sutcliffe

Monday 20 Oct 8.00PM

Women feared for their lives until a routine police stop ended his reign of terror. The quiet married man brutally murdered 13 women after 'God' told him to rid the world of prostitutes.

Women feared for their lives until a routine police stop ended his reign of terror.

Peter William Sutcliffe was the first of six children born to John and Kathleen Sutcliffe, on 2nd June 1946, in Bingley, Yorkshire. As a boy he was reserved, and preferred spending time with his mother, finding it difficult to make friends at school, and he was often bullied. He left school aged fifteen, with no clear career focus, and his early working life was spent in a number of short-lived, menial occupations, which included a stint as a gravedigger.

There is speculation that a bad experience with a prostitute led to the violent hatred of these women that resulted in the death of thirteen women.

Outwardly he presented as a diligent, likeable individual, if a little reserved, and, in 1966, he met the daughter of Czech immigrants, Sonia Szurma, whom he courted and eventually married in August 1974. They moved in with her parents, as his chequered work history meant that they had insufficient funds to buy their own home.

During the time of their courtship, Sutcliffe had developed an obsession with prostitutes that he indulged together with a friend, Trevor Birdsall, and they spent a large portion of their spare time cruising red-light districts in the Yorkshire area. This obsession continued after their marriage and the acquisition of his HGV licence in June 1975, and his subsequent work as a lorry driver, took him away from home more than ever, enabling him to indulge his obsession without fear of detection. There is speculation that a bad experience with a prostitute, during one of these forays, led to the violent hatred of these women that resulted in the death of thirteen women, and the vicious attack of seven others.

His first reported attack occurred on 4th 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 30th 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 20th 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.

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.

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 9th 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 1st 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 21st January 1978 (whose body lay undiscovered until March); 18-year old Helen Rytka on 31st 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 4th 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 1st 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 20th 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 17th 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.

Sutcliffe was initially sent to Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight, but was transferred to Broadmoor secure hospital in 1984 following an attack by another Parkhurst inmate. In 1997, Sutcliffe was stabbed with a pen by another Broadmoor patient, Ian Kay, which cost him the sight in his left eye.

Despite his lack of popularity amongst fellow inmates, Sutcliffe reportedly receives considerable fan mail from female admirers. He remains at Broadmoor secure hospital.

Recent European legislation, outlawing the ability of Home Secretaries to impose “whole of life” tariffs, means that Sutcliffe may be eligible for parole in May 2011. However, public opinion and media interest make this unlikely; in January 2005 he was allowed out of Broadmoor briefly to visit his father’s grave, which provoked a huge media outcry.

On 20th October 2005, a former security guard, John Humble, was arrested and charged with perverting the course of justice by sending two letters and a tape recording that led to the hunt for the Ripper hoaxer, “Wearside Jack”. More sophisticated DNA profiling has enabled experts to match his DNA, from a motoring offence, to saliva taken from one of the envelopes containing the hoax letter sent in 1978. In March 2006, Humble was jailed for eight years at Leeds Crown Court.

On 2nd 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.

Born
2nd June 1946

The Victims
30th October 1975: Wilma McCann, 28, Leeds
20th January 1976: Emily Jackson, 42, Leeds
5th February 1977: Irene Richardson, 28, Leeds
23rd April 1977: Patricia Atkinson, 32, Bradford
26th June 1977: Jayne MacDonald, 16, Leeds
1st October 1977: Jean Jordan, 20, Manchester
21st January 1978: Yvonne Pearson, 21, Bradford
31st January 1978: Helen Rytka, 18, Huddersfield
16th May 1978: Vera Millward, 40, Manchester
4th April 1979: Josephine Whitaker, 19, Halifax
2nd September 1979: Barbara Leach, 20, Bradford
20th August 1980: Marguerite Walls, 47, Leeds
17th November 1980: Jacqueline Hill, 20, Leeds

Arrested
2nd January 1981

Trial
5th May 1981

Convicted
22nd May 1981

Police were satisfied that Sutcliffe was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and should be incarcerated in a secure mental institution, but the presiding judge decided that he would face trial, giving a jury the right to decide whether he was insane.

Sutcliffe’s trial commenced on 5th May 1981, lasting a fortnight, and his detailed confession meant that the jury were instructed to determine his mental state, rather than his guilt or innocence. On 22nd May 1981, after six hours of deliberation, the jury found him sane, and guilty of thirteen counts of murder. The judge recommended a minimum tariff of thirty years.


	8:00PM The Mysterious Dr Swango 9:00PM Charles Ng & Leonard Lake 10:00PM Cold Case Files: Episode 14 11:00PM Snapped: Donna Yaklich Remember Register \| Forgotten Password? I accept the T&Cs Peter Sutcliffe: The Yorkshire Ripper Yorkshire Ripper: Peter Sutcliffe Monday 20 Oct 8.00PM Women feared for their lives until a routine police stop ended his reign of terror. The quiet married man brutally murdered 13 women after 'God' told him to rid the world of prostitutes. Women feared for their lives until a routine police stop ended his reign of terror. Peter William Sutcliffe was the first of six children born to John and Kathleen Sutcliffe, on 2nd June 1946, in Bingley, Yorkshire. As a boy he was reserved, and preferred spending time with his mother, finding it difficult to make friends at school, and he was often bullied. He left school aged fifteen, with no clear career focus, and his early working life was spent in a number of short-lived, menial occupations, which included a stint as a gravedigger. There is speculation that a bad experience with a prostitute led to the violent hatred of these women that resulted in the death of thirteen women. Outwardly he presented as a diligent, likeable individual, if a little reserved, and, in 1966, he met the daughter of Czech immigrants, Sonia Szurma, whom he courted and eventually married in August 1974. They moved in with her parents, as his chequered work history meant that they had insufficient funds to buy their own home. During the time of their courtship, Sutcliffe had developed an obsession with prostitutes that he indulged together with a friend, Trevor Birdsall, and they spent a large portion of their spare time cruising red-light districts in the Yorkshire area. This obsession continued after their marriage and the acquisition of his HGV licence in June 1975, and his subsequent work as a lorry driver, took him away from home more than ever, enabling him to indulge his obsession without fear of detection. There is speculation that a bad experience with a prostitute, during one of these forays, led to the violent hatred of these women that resulted in the death of thirteen women, and the vicious attack of seven others. His first reported attack occurred on 4th 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 30th 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 20th 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. 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. 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 9th 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 1st 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 21st January 1978 (whose body lay undiscovered until March); 18-year old Helen Rytka on 31st 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 4th 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 1st 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 20th 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 17th 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. Sutcliffe was initially sent to Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight, but was transferred to Broadmoor secure hospital in 1984 following an attack by another Parkhurst inmate. In 1997, Sutcliffe was stabbed with a pen by another Broadmoor patient, Ian Kay, which cost him the sight in his left eye. Despite his lack of popularity amongst fellow inmates, Sutcliffe reportedly receives considerable fan mail from female admirers. He remains at Broadmoor secure hospital. Recent European legislation, outlawing the ability of Home Secretaries to impose “whole of life” tariffs, means that Sutcliffe may be eligible for parole in May 2011. However, public opinion and media interest make this unlikely; in January 2005 he was allowed out of Broadmoor briefly to visit his father’s grave, which provoked a huge media outcry. On 20th October 2005, a former security guard, John Humble, was arrested and charged with perverting the course of justice by sending two letters and a tape recording that led to the hunt for the Ripper hoaxer, “Wearside Jack”. More sophisticated DNA profiling has enabled experts to match his DNA, from a motoring offence, to saliva taken from one of the envelopes containing the hoax letter sent in 1978. In March 2006, Humble was jailed for eight years at Leeds Crown Court. On 2nd 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. Born 2nd June 1946 The Victims 30th October 1975: Wilma McCann, 28, Leeds 20th January 1976: Emily Jackson, 42, Leeds 5th February 1977: Irene Richardson, 28, Leeds 23rd April 1977: Patricia Atkinson, 32, Bradford 26th June 1977: Jayne MacDonald, 16, Leeds 1st October 1977: Jean Jordan, 20, Manchester 21st January 1978: Yvonne Pearson, 21, Bradford 31st January 1978: Helen Rytka, 18, Huddersfield 16th May 1978: Vera Millward, 40, Manchester 4th April 1979: Josephine Whitaker, 19, Halifax 2nd September 1979: Barbara Leach, 20, Bradford 20th August 1980: Marguerite Walls, 47, Leeds 17th November 1980: Jacqueline Hill, 20, Leeds Arrested 2nd January 1981 Trial 5th May 1981 Convicted 22nd May 1981 Police were satisfied that Sutcliffe was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and should be incarcerated in a secure mental institution, but the presiding judge decided that he would face trial, giving a jury the right to decide whether he was insane. Sutcliffe’s trial commenced on 5th May 1981, lasting a fortnight, and his detailed confession meant that the jury were instructed to determine his mental state, rather than his guilt or innocence. On 22nd May 1981, after six hours of deliberation, the jury found him sane, and guilty of thirteen counts of murder. The judge recommended a minimum tariff of thirty years.