Sir Lawrence Byford
Chief Inspector of Constabulary who found glaring errors in the Yorkshire Ripper investigation
SIR LAWRENCE BYFORD, the former Chief Inspector of Constabulary, who has died aged 92, was a senior police officer who led an inquiry into the failings of the hunt for the “Yorkshire Ripper”, Peter Sutcliffe, and after his retirement served as president and chairman of Yorkshire County Cricket Club during a tumultuous era.
Byford had served as Chief Constable of Lincolnshire and was an Inspector of Constabulary in 1981 when, following the conviction of Peter Sutcliffe for murdering 13 women and attacking seven others, and amid criticism of the way West Yorkshire Police had conducted their investigation, he was asked by the Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw to conduct an inquiry into all aspects of the case.
Byford produced his hard-hitting report in 1982. Its main findings were published at the time, although it was not until 2006 that the Home Office made the full 100,000-word text available to the public.
The five-year hunt for the Ripper, who used hammers, screwdrivers and knives to butcher his 13 victims, took up millions of police hours, and officers spoke to nearly a quarter of a million people and took 28,687 statements.
Extraordinarily, although Sutcliffe was questioned nine times by murder squad detectives during the inquiry, and a further two times by police in connection with a theft of car tyres and a drink-drive offence, he was released each time.
The Byford report gave a step-bystep analysis of each interview, pointing out failures to ask important questions, investigate alibis and conduct searches of Sutcliffe’s home and car. The report concluded that the West Yorkshire Police incident room was “sadly inefficient” and overloaded with unprocessed information, leading to a catalogue of errors which led to a failure to pinpoint Sutcliffe as a prime suspect.
Lives might have been saved had the hunt been better organised.
Byford also highlighted as a serious error the excessive credence given to hoax letters and tape recordings from a man claiming to be the killer and signing himself “Jack the Ripper”.
Sutcliffe, the report found, was almost certainly responsible for many more murders and attacks than the 13 killings he is known to have carried out. In particular Byford identified an unexplained “lull” in his criminal activities between 1969 – when he first came to the police’s attention – and the first officially recognised Ripper assault in 1975.
“We feel it is highly improbable that the crimes in respect of which Sutcliffe has been charged and convicted are the only ones attributable to him,” Byford concluded. “This feeling is reinforced by examining the details of a number of assaults on women since 1969 which, in some ways, clearly fall into the established pattern of Sutcliffe’s overall modus operandi.’’
The report recommended a number of changes to investigative procedures, including the urgent development of computers for major crime investigations, that have been adopted by police forces throughout Great Britain, and around the world.
The son of a coal miner, George Byford, and his wife Monica, Lawrence Byford was born at Normanton in the West Riding of Yorkshire on August 10 1925. He left school in his early teens without any qualifications and, after attending a metalwork course at his local technical college, became an apprentice electrician working at a local pit.
In August 1944 he was called up and trained with the Royal Signals at Bletchley, where, despite his limited education, he came top in his exams. He joined the Royal Signals Special Communications Unit as a wireless operator and in December was dispatched to the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force, then based at Versailles. Seconded to G2 Section of the US Army, he served in France, Belgium and Germany.
His wartime service led him to realise that with hard work and application he could become a leader of some kind and would not necessarily have to return to work down the pit at the end of the war.
Following demobilisation, in 1947 he joined the West Riding Constabulary, rising through the ranks to become divisional commander in Huddersfield in 1966. In 1973 he was appointed Chief Constable of Lincolnshire.
Throughout his early career, he studied part-time for qualifications to make up for the gaps in his early education, graduating from the University of Leeds in 1956 with a degree in Law. Two years later he was called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn.
In 1977 he was appointed an Inspector of Constabulary and in 1983 became Chief Inspector of Constabulary, the principal professional adviser on police matters to the Home Secretary and other ministers.
As well as the Ripper inquiry, following the IRA bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party conference in 1984 Byford was appointed to head a working party charged with producing guidelines to improve security at future political conferences. The guidance was promulgated in time for the 1985 party conference season and is followed by all political parties to this day.
Byford lectured widely in Britain as well as at the FBI and at the National Police Foundation in Washington DC. In 1978-79, he led a Foreign and Commonwealth Office consultancy team to Turkey, advising the Turkish prime minister and the Turkish government on terrorism and internal disorder.
Byford was passionate about all sport, particularly football, rugby league and cricket. In retirement, he became president and chairman of Yorkshire, taking over following the death of his cricketing hero, Sir Leonard Hutton.
Under his leadership, the committee was persuaded to dispense with the unwritten, but traditional, rule of “only Yorkshire-born” players, and in 1992 the club signed a 19-year-old Indian cricketer called Sachin Tendulkar. Byford also helped to put the club on a much sounder financial footing; however, his hopes of moving the club from Headingley to new headquarters on a greenfield site alongside the M1 at Durkar fell through after several years of heated debate, during which it was reported that relations between Byford and the club’s landlord, Paul Caddick, became so bad that both men had to agree to keep a decent distance from each other.
Byford was a lifelong supporter of Leeds United and a member of MCC.
He was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal in 1973, appointed CBE in 1979, and knighted in 1984. In 1987, he was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Lincolnshire and in 1992 a Deputy Lieutenant of North Yorkshire.
But in 2012, when the town council of his childhood home in Normanton appointed him its Diamond Jubilee Honorary Citizen, he described it as “the greatest honour of them all”.
A devoted family man, Byford was married for 67 years to Muriel (née Massey), who survives him with two sons and a daughter. His son Mark is the former deputy director general of the BBC.
Sir Lawrence Byford, born August 10 1925, died February 10 2018