RIPPER TOLD HIS CUSHY LIFE IS OVER

The Yorkshire Ripper’s ‘cushy life’ in a mental hospital has been brought to an end after he was officially declared sane. After 32 years in Broadmoor, Sutcliffe’s going to a proper jail

Peter Sutcliffe has lost his fight to remain at Broadmoor and will be moved to a topsecurity prison ‘within weeks’.

The decision by the Mental Health Tribunal will save the taxpayer £250,000 a year. High security jail costs only £50,000 a year – compared to £300,000 in Broadmoor, where the serial killer has spent more than three decades and has a TV and DVDs in his room.

The 70-year-old will now live out his days

with killers and other inmates who are fully aware of his monstrous crimes. He will die in jail as he is serving a whole-life tariff.

One source close to the case said: ‘For him, the cushy life he thinks he has in Broadmoor is finally over now.’

Sutcliffe has previously claimed that he would go on hunger strike if he was made to leave Broadmoor. He was given 20 life sentences in 1981 and transferred to the Berkshire hospital from prison three years later after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

But over the course of his sentence, Sutcliffe has cost the taxpayer as much as £10million to keep locked up – much of it owing to the high cost of Broadmoor.

He has also set the public back hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal aid.

As well as the 13 women he butchered in a six-year reign of terror, he tried to murder at least seven more.

For years the Ripper – who claimed he murdered the women after hearing God tell him to kill sex workers – has insisted he remains insane in order to stay in hospital.

But psychiatrists and other experts working for the government tribunal this week ruled he was sane and should be returned to jail. Liz Truss, the new Justice Secretary, last night agreed to rubber-stamp the decision.

Work will now begin to move the killer to an as yet undecided category A prison.

He is expected to be regularly moved from jail to jail owing to his notoriety and the likelihood that other inmates may wish to harm or even kill him.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said that Sutcliffe – now known as Peter Coonan – will ‘remain locked up and will never be released for his evil crimes’.

She added: ‘Decisions over whether prisoners are to be sent back to prison from secure hospitals are based on clinical assessments made by independent medical staff.

‘The High Court ordered in 2010 that Peter Coonan should never be released. This was upheld by the Court of Appeal. Our thoughts are with Coonan’s victims and their families.’ In one of the most notorious cases of the past century, Sutcliffe used a range of weapons including a hammer, screwdriver and knives to mutilate women across the north of England. Since his conviction, police and other experts have suggested he may have killed many more women than those he was convicted for in the 1981 trial.

The monster is said to be furious at the prospect of leaving the hospital, where he has a Freeview TV and DVD player in his room. He is believed to prefer it there as the other patients are often on drugs to control their own conditions and do not pose a threat to him. He has apparently vowed to stop eating and stop taking his antipsychotic drugs if he is moved.

Earlier this year, he reportedly said: ‘I wouldn’t have to take it. I’d be protesting against them saying I wasn’t ill. I’d go on hunger strike as well.’ He has also started claiming once again that he can hear a ‘voice from God’ telling him to kill prostitutes – the same excuse he gave when he was handed concurrent life sentences for the brutal murders.

He apparently says the voices in his head have urged him to murder two women in a Broadmoor visiting room.

But Sutcliffe’s brother claims the killer faked mental illness to avoid being sent to a maximum security jail.

Carl Sutcliffe, 50, said his sibling was never mentally ill and had planned to ‘make out that he was mad and then he’d get an easy ride’. The Ripper’s victims and their families have also called for his cushy life in Broadmoor to be brought to an end.

Marcella Claxton, 59, was 20 when Sutcliffe attacked her with a hammer. She said: ‘He should be moved to a prison, he’s not sick is he? He wasn’t mentally ill when he attacked me. He should be treated like anyone else.’

Julie Lowry, 55, whose mother Olive Smelt also survived an attack by the killer, said: ‘I don’t think he was ever really mad. If it makes his life harder, yes, he should be moved out of Broadmoor.’

When he was sentenced to 20 life sentences in 1981, the judge told him he would serve a minimum of 30 years – but this was never formally fixed at the time. In 2010, he used legal aid to try to secure his release by claiming he was no longer a threat to the public.

A judge rejected his pleas and instead handed him a whole life tariff – which means he is one of a small band of killers who will die in jail. Now he is taking advantage of a human rights court ruling which says that he must have a minimum tariff fixed by a court, rather than by a politician.

Two years ago Professor Tony Maden, the former head of the dangerous severe personality disorder unit at Broadmoor, said patients such as Sutcliffe should be returned to prison. The academic, a professor of forensic psychiatry at Imperial College London, said: ‘We are far too ready to keep mentally disordered prisoners in places like Broadmoor indefinitely, particularly if they are famous.’

‘Pretend he was mad to get an easy ride’