By Tony O’Riley-
Sutcliffe escaped capture for 6 years due to a mishandled investigation. The mass killer was interviewed and released nine times in connection with the killings, with officers repeatedly missing clues that could have led to an earlier conviction.
The beast’s reign of terror left women across Yorkshire frightened of going out on their own and sparked a massive and bungled police investigation in the region. In the process, Sutcliffe was interviewed and released nine times.
In 1976, Marcella Claxton, 20, was hit over the head with a hammer near her home in Leeds; she survived and produced an accurate photofit but was dismissed as a Ripper victim because she was not a sex worker. The misjudgement was reckless because it was based on the assumption that evil killer Sutcliffe couldn’t possibly prey on anybody who was not a sex worker, or that Ms Claxton could not possibly have acted as a sex worker on the occasion she met Sutcliffe, but chose to keep that secret to police.
Police overlooked that Sutcliffe had been arrested in 1969 for carrying a hammer in a red light district, and an anonymous letter sent by his friend Trevor Birdsall to try to expose him.
West Yorkshire police’s assistant chief constable side track for considerable period of time by a tape purporting to be from the killer that later turned out to be a hoax.
At his Old Bailey trial, Sutcliffe said: “It was just a miracle they did not apprehend me earlier – they had all the facts.”
Sutcliffe was eventually stopped with a sex worker in his brown Rover car, which had false number plates. When officers found screwdrivers in the glove compartment of the vehicle, others went back to the scene of the arrest and found a hammer and knife 15 metres (50ft) from where the vehicle had been. Sutcliffe had dumped the weapons when officers allowed him to go to the toilet at the side of a building.
Sutcliffe unexpectedly confessed, and calmly told Det Insp John Boyle: “It’s all right, I know what you’re leading up to. The Yorkshire Ripper. It’s me. I killed all those women.”
His detailed confession took 24 hours, during which time he asked for his wife, Sonia, to be brought to the station so he could tell her he was the killer.
Sutcliffe went on trial at the Old Bailey in May 1981. During the trial, he claimed he had been directed by God to kill sex workers. Sutcliffe used hammers and screwdrivers to murder his victims over a five-year period, between 1975 and 1980. He targeted women from all walks of life – the youngest was 16, the oldest 42 – sparking a reign of terror that meant no woman in the region felt safe. In some areas, police warned women not to go out alone at night.
Richard McCann, the son of Sutcliffe’s first-known victim, Wilma McCann, said he had ruined many lives. “He will go down as one of those figures from the 20th century in the same league I suppose as someone like Hitler,” he told Sky News.
“It was never just a drunken fight, he went out there with tools and implements and he murdered people again and again and again and again.”
Families
West Yorkshire police sergeant, Brian Booth, Chairman of West Yorkshire Police Federation, said his thoughts are with all the families affected by Sutcliffe’s path of murder and destruction.
Chairman of West Yorkshire Police Federation: Brian Booth
Speaking today on the death of Peter Sutcliffe today, Mr Booth said: “I feel good riddance. The monster who murdered so many innocent women in and around West Yorkshire should rot in hell.
“He is the very reason most people step to the plate and become Police Officers – to protect our communities from people like him.”
Brian added: “As a child in West Yorkshire, when he was on his reign of terror, I can say his activities caused fear throughout the region. My heart goes out to all the families affected through the loss of their loved ones, but I personally will not be mourning the death of this monster.”