Ripper could face trial as 13 suspected victims quizzed
COLD case detectives are set to decide whether to pursue new charges against Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe.
Officers have now finished quizzing at least 13 women who survived brutal unsolved attacks during his reign of terror between 1975 and 1980.
They asked for new statements from the suspected victims and took forensic samples which could be key to any further action because Sutcliffe’s trial predated DNA tests. The results will decide whether officers interview Sutcliffe – jailed for life in 1981 for the murder of 13 women and attempted murder of seven more.
He could even face another trial if the police and CPS decide there is enough evidence and it is in the public interest.
The new development emerges as Sutcliffe, 70, is set to be moved from his cushy room at Broadmoor after doctors ruled he is no longer mentally ill.
He has spent three decades there costing the taxpayer more than £11million. The serial killer could now be moved to a category A jail within weeks and will die behind bars. His most likely destination is believed to be Durham’s Frankland Prison, where Soham killer Ian Huntley is.
Sutcliffe, who now calls himself Peter Coonan after his mother’s maiden name, preyed on women across Yorkshire and Greater Manchester for five years beating them to death and mutilating the bodies.
At his trial he pleaded not guilty on the grounds of diminished responsibility and was later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The cold case inquiry is believed to focus on censored files in a 1982 government report not published until 2006. It concluded Sutcliffe was “probably responsible” for more attacks.
A West Yorkshire Police spokesman confirmed officers had “visited a small number of people named as victims of then unsolved assaults. We have now finished speaking with these persons.”