Did the Ripper kill Jacci?
Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe is known to have killed two women in Manchester – Vera Millward and Jean Jordan as well as 11 other women. But were there other killings he got away with? It’s a theory explored by former police intelligence officer and writer, Chris Clark, who believes Jacqueline Ansell-Lamb and Barbara Mayo – two hitchhikers murdered in 1970 – were ‘secret’ victims of the serial killer, who died 18 months ago. Here, M.E.N. chief reporter NEAL KEELING examines two tragic unsolved cases.
IT IS an image which is now unthinkable. But it was a different era, when the hope-filled, 1960s, with its explosion of youth culture had just ended. An 18-year-old secretary stood at a busy junction of the M1, seven miles from London, hitching a ride north.
The teenager holding out her thumb was vivacious, party-loving Jacqueline Ansell-Lamb, and her destination was Manchester, 200 miles away. She would never reach her tiny attic flat in a rambling Victorian house in Wellington Road, Whalley Range.
Jacqueline began her journey from Hendon at 2.30pm on Sunday March 8, 1970. She had been dropped off by a boyfriend, David Sykes, at Brackley Hill Interchange.
He had watched her walk down to an approach road to the motorway.
In a poignant coincidence the No 1 song in the charts was ‘Wand’rin Star’ – sung by a gravel-voiced Lee Marvin from the hit film, Paint Your Wagon, which also starred Clint Eastwood.
Hitchhiking was common then, as Britain’s fledgling motorway network was beginning to take shape.
As a strikingly beautiful young woman, standing alone, Jacqueline wouldn’t have been waiting long for a lift.
Jacci, as she liked to be called, worked as a secretary and had recently moved to Manchester. On the walls of her £4.50-a-week digs were posters of charismatic actor Steve McQueen, whose films Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair had been huge hits two years earlier, and Beatle George Harrison.
There was a nest of shampoo, hand cream and make-up, shared with her flat mate, Judi Longrish.
The two had been back to London for the weekend for a party. They had argued about how they would return to Manchester. Judi bought a return train ticket. Jacqueline got a single and said she would try and borrow the money for the return. She had stayed in London on Friday, Saturday and part of Sunday with Mr Sykes, who dropped her off at the M1.
Several people noticed Jacci on the motorway, attempting to get a lift northbound. It was the day after City had won the League Cup, defeating West Bromwich Albion 2-1. It is known that she got a lift to Buckinghamshire, in the company of another hitchhiker.
But on Saturday March 14, 1970, a farmer, Ted Whittaker, of Knowles Pit Farm, found her body off a rural road near Square Wood, Mere, Knutsford.
He had gone out at 9.30pm to take hay to his sheep and noticed clothing, before discovering Jacqueline face-down in a copse.
She had been raped and strangled with an electrical flex. The bruises on her neck and cuts on her face indicated she had put up a desperate fight. Dressed in a maxi coat, mustard jumper and steel grey tights, she was lying off Bentleyhurst Lane, close to the B5569 Chester to Manchester road. Her blue and white herringbone mini-skirt and buckled maroon leather patent shoes were found nearby.
Police also found her distinctive Japanese Airlines shoulder bag, which she cherished because the initials matched hers. A diary in which she had written about boyfriends, rating them from A plus to C minus, was recovered – but it offered no clue to her killer. The copse where her body was found was about a mile from the Tabley exit of the M6.
A120-STRONG team of detectives led by Det Supt Arthur Benfield was brought together for the investigation. Within a month 5,000 people, mainly motorists and lorry drivers using the M6 had been questioned.
A police appeal resulted in an eyewitness coming forward. He said he saw Jacqueline get into a saloon car
between 4 and 5pm on March 8, at Keele Services motorway station on the M6, which had opened seven years earlier. Then, another crucial clue emerged. A woman who matched Jacci’s description had been seen in the Poplar Transport Cafe, in High Legh, near Knutsford, on the same evening.
Police issued an ‘Identikit’ image of a man who was with her in the cafe – which is now Lymm Truckstop, which was built on the other side of the road. He was 5ft 9in, of medium build, dressed in a dark suit. There was a suggestion he had been driving a white Jaguar. He was never traced.
In the days after Jacqueline’s murder, the caretaker at her Whalley Range flat, Mrs Katherine Hall, said: “Jacqueline was a beautiful girl, refined and well mannered.”
Her flatmate, Judi Longrish, who had reported her missing on Monday March 9, 1970, when she didn’t return to Manchester, described what she thought had happened to her. “With someone she liked and was attracted to she could be very charming and pleasant,” Judi said. “If a man made approaches and Jacqueline didn’t find him attractive she could be extremely blunt and even cruel. She would simply tell them where to go. I think this may have happened with the man who killed her. He probably lost his temper.”
Jacci had lived with her father until 1968 when she moved to a flat in London. She had only relocated to Manchester three weeks before her murder.
In January 1991, the BBC Crimewatch programme re-examined the case. But, instead of going out at the usual prime time slot, it was screened on BBC2 as the breaking Gulf War was being covered on BBC1.
In the programme Det Supt Laurence Mellor spoke from the Poplar transport cafe where Jacci was last seen. He says she was believed to have been there between 9 and 10pm on March 8, 1970. She was seen with a man by several witnesses, and one was Delia Brown, who in 1991, was still employed at the cafe.
She said: “I remember vividly there was a man came through the door. He went up to her and then came over for two coffees. He was smartly dressed... business-like clothing. Within seconds he was sitting with her, talking. They were there for half an hour or more. Then I remember them going through the door and I could see it was a car she got into.”
In the same programme, Det Supt Mellor also revealed his own theory about the killer. He said: “Experts have examined Jacci’s body and found several pieces of carpet fibre and examination show they are likely to come from a carpet roll or sample, rather than a vehicle in which she might have travelled.
“We know that on the same weekend she was murdered there had been a carpet exhibition at Earls Court and that Jacci was seen with a man in the Poplar cafe, who was smartly dressed and described as a rep or salesman.
“My own feelings are that Jacci’s killer is likely to be a man who 20 years ago (1970) had some connection with the carpet industry and I would like anyone who has been harbouring any doubts or suspicions about such a person to contact us now.”
Fifty-two years on the case remains open. Anyone with information can call the Major Crime Review Team at Cheshire Police on 101.