Fiend who butchered 13 women in six-year killing spree
THE Yorkshire Ripper butchered 13 women and tried to murder seven others, mutilating his victims with a hammer, screwdriver and knife.
Bradford lorry driver Peter Sutcliffe regularly used prostitutes and apparently launched his killing spree after being swindled out of money by one of them and her pimp.
For nearly six years from 1975 he terrorised the people of Yorkshire and Greater Manchester. Starting by killing prostitutes, he moved on to bludgeoning women at random in the streets.
His youngest victim, Jayne MacDonald, was 16, and the oldest, Marguerite Walls, was 47. The first woman he killed was mother of four Wilma McCann, whom he stabbed 15 times in the neck, chest and stomach. The last was Jacqueline Hill, a 20-year-old student murdered on waste ground in Leeds.
At least one of the women he murdered left a tormented child who took their own life as an adult.
Yorkshire Police hunting the murderer gathered a quarter of a million names, individually filed on cards, and more than 30,000 statements. But none of it led to his arrest. A former detective recently claimed police even suspected Jimmy Savile at one stage and brought him in for questioning. Years later Savile and Sutcliffe formed a disturbing friendship when the BBC star did volunteering work at Broadmoor.
Between 1978 and 1979 hoaxer John Humble, who was later jailed, sent police on a wild goose chase to the North East looking for someone with a Geordie accent. Sutcliffe was eventually snared by chance in 1980 in a red light area of Sheffield during a routine number-plate check of his car. His then wife Sonia Szurma, whom he married in 1974, told of her shock. At his Old Bailey trial in 1981 Sutcliffe claimed he had heard a voice while working as a gravedigger in 1967, and that God had instructed him to kill prostitutes. The jury did not believe him, and Sutcliffe was sentenced to 20 life terms.
The trial judge ruled he should serve at least 30 years and he was sent to Parkhurst, a regular prison, on the Isle of Wight. In 1983 an inmate plunged a broken coffee jar into his face, requiring 30 stitches.
In 1984, Sutcliffe was moved to Broadmoor secure mental hospital in Berkshire after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Home Secretaries subsequently decided he should never be released. Sutcliffe appealed against this at the High Court in 2010 but Mr Justice Mitting turned him down, comparing his spree to a ‘terrorist outrage’. Yet the Ripper gets fan mail and has even been engaged.
He was attacked in Broadmoor too – stabbed in both eyes by a convicted murderer. He lost the sight in his left eye. In 2015, he was allowed out to visit an NHS clinic in Surrey for treatment to his right eye, mingling with shocked members of the public. His weight had ballooned to almost 20st and he has a range of ailments.
Sutcliffe has gone on hunger strike when he previously thought he would be moved to a jail. In 2005, he was on the verge of a coma after starving himself for 12 days.
In recent months, he has been on suicide watch after realising psychiatrists were sceptical of his mental health ruse and could have him transferred back to jail. Now, at last, it is happening.
He was snared by chance