‘No plans’ for extra Ripper charges

THERE ARE no plans to charge Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe with any further offences, West Yorkshire Police (WYP) have confirmed.

Sutcliffe, of Bradford, who is serving 20 life terms for murdering 13 women and attempting to kill seven more, was reported to have been interviewed about widespread allegations he may have been responsible for further attacks.

But Detective Superintendent Jim Dunkerley, of WYP, said while the continued to review unresolved murders and serious sexual assaults the force has “no intention to seek a CPS decision to charge Peter Sutcliffe with any further matters”.

Two years ago, the force confirmed it was continuing to review cases listed in the 1982 report written by Sir Lawrence Byford about the flawed Ripper investigation. Sir Lawrence died on Saturday at the age of 92.

The Byford Report revealed that Sutcliffe could have been responsible for a further 13 offences.

Last year, The Sun reported that he had been interviewed in prison about 17 unsolved cases. But West Yorkshire Police said they could not comment on who detectives had spoken to in the course of an ongoing investigation. In 2016 the force did confirm that officers had visited a small number of people named in the Byford Report.

Sir Lawrence’s report was only made public in 2006 and said there was an “unexplained lull” in Sutcliffe’s criminal activities between 1969, when he first came to the police’s attention, and the first officially recognised Ripper assault in 1975. It said: “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. 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.”