‘RIPPER’ FEAR OF SEX ATTACK VICTIM

A WOMAN who says she was violently raped by a man weeks before he became a notorious child killer has told a jury how she once thought her attacker might have been Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe.

The woman, who is now in her 60s, told a jury how “monster” Peter Pickering tied her up in his van before raping her, burning her breasts with cigarettes and saying he would kill her when she was 18 in the summer of 1972. wherever he is now that’s the right place for him to be.”

She said the only person she told about the attack, until police contacted her in 2016 and persuaded her to co-operate, was a psychiatrist a few months after the assault.

Prosecutors told the jury that it is now believed this doctor was working on behalf of Pickering’s defence team VICTIM: Shirley Boldy KILLER: Pickering RIPPER: Peter Sutcliffe in 1972. But the woman told the court she had no idea she might have been helping Pickering.

She said: “In hindsight, if I’d known I had been helping him in any way, I wouldn’t have gone.”

She added: “Years later, I actually thought he was Peter Sutcliffe.”

In her second day giving evidence, the woman, described how she got into Pickering’s van voluntarily when he picked her up as she was walking to work from her home in the Stocksbridge area of Sheffield.

Pickering suddenly changed from being amiable and pleasant when he “went beserk” like a “mad man”.

She said: “It was like somebody flicked a switch”.

She described her terror when Pickering forced her into the back of his van in woodland.

She said: “I expected him to kill me there and then. I do remember him saying ‘I’ll have to kill you’.”

She told the jury she never reported the attack at that time because she did not think she would be believed.

Pickering, who appeared in court via video link from Swindon Crown Court, denies rape and false imprisonment.

He was subjected to a hospital order in 1972 for the manslaughter of Shirley Boldy by reason of diminished responsibility. He is currently being held at Thornford Park Hospital, in Berkshire.