Why the Yorkshire Ripper got away with murder for so long
These days, it’s hard to imagine police trying to catch a serial killer without DNAtesting, CCTV and computer databases. But in the seventies, detectives on Britain’s biggest ever manhunt had none of those.
In The Yorkshire Ripper Files: A Very British Crime Story (BBC4), film- maker Liza Williams re-examined the case of Peter sutcliffe, who murdered 13 women and attacked at least eight others, and the fatal mistakes made in the investigation.
In the first of a three-part series, we saw how a decline in traditional industries (such as mining and textiles) plunged areas such as Chapeltown in Leeds into poverty.
In 1975, its people were considered ‘the lowest of the low’ according to Ruth Bundey, a solicitor who has lived there most of her life.
Wilma McCann, a single mother of four, was sutcliffe’s first victim in 1975. she was seen as a prostitute but, despite a chaotic life, there was no clear evidence she was. her son, Richard, was five when she died and remembered being carted off to a children’s home with no explanation.
Three months later, sutcliffe murdered emily Jackson, a woman forced into prostitution when the family roofing business collapsed. It was a similar story for Irene Richardson. A former neighbour described her as a ‘good mother’ who had no choice but to sell her body to keep her four children with a roof over their head.
Following sutcliffe’s first three murders, police were convinced they were looking for a man on a mission to rid the world of prostitutes.
This was a risky theory that led officers to repeatedly ignore key evidence and fuelled a public feeling that the victims were bad women and undeserving of pity.
Photos of them in the Press looking hard-faced and unsmiling contributed to this perception.
It wasn’t just the detective methods that were unsophisticated, attitudes were, too.
The police described surviving victim Olive smelt as being ‘loosemoralled’ — although her only ‘crime’ had been to go to the pub without her husband.
Of course, such notorious crimes always hold a grim fascination, but last night’s programme avoided being voyeuristic by providing a fascinating insight into how far policing has moved on in 40 years, both in method and attitude.
On a lighter note, the second series of comedy Derry Girls (Channel 4) has been a joy so far. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag may be finding laughs out of the Catholic church but Derry Girls got there first. Last night, there was chaos at a wedding and a wake. Aunt sarah ruined the ceremony by arriving late and walking down the aisle in a white dress ahead of the bride.
At the reception, Ma Mary told her snobbish Aunt Bridie to ‘drop dead’ — and she did just that, leading her family to believe she must be cursed. At the wake, visiting english cousin James said he found it uncomfortable to eat sandwiches and drink tea with an open coffin laid out in the room.
‘The english are weird,’ came the reply.
set against the backdrop of The Troubles, writer and creator Lisa McGee has done a firstclass job of capturing teenage angst, family clashes and the hilarious reality of an Irish Catholic upbringing.
Like a charming cross between Father Ted and The Inbetweeners, the interaction between the characters, and the one-liners makes Derry Girls one of the best comedies on TV. Christopher stevens is away.