Ripper’s ‘dry run’ attack on girl of 14 before he began his killing spree
‘He’s being so arrogant’
YORKSHIRE Ripper Peter Sutcliffe confessed on tape to a terrifying ‘dry run’ attack on a teenager two months before he began his killing spree.
The 71-year-old, convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to kill seven more, admitted he was ‘on a mission’ to slay ‘tarts’ when he attacked Tracy Browne, then a 14-year-old schoolgirl, in August 1975.
She was hit five times over the head with a hammer, suffering a fractured skull, before being thrown over a barbed-wire fence and left for dead.
Miss Browne survived only because of emergency surgery, including the removal of a piece of bone from her brain.
But in the recording, Sutcliffe, who said he mistook her for a prostitute, claimed he struck her with a tree branch. He said he was about to ‘bump her off’ before voices in his head told him to stop.
The conversation, obtained by The Sun newspaper, is thought to have taken place between the killer and medical staff at Broadmoor secure hospital shortly before he was moved back to prison last August.
Miss Browne, now 56 and working as a receptionist at a car firm, reacted with horror to the recording, saying: ‘I can’t believe what he’s said. He’s being so arrogant.
‘He’s just making it sound so frivolous. What happened is a different story to how he’s describing it. My injuries weren’t caused by a blow with a stick. I was hit with a hammer five times – I’ve got the dents in my skull to prove it. I just remember him throwing me over a fence while this car came down the road.’
Sutcliffe abandoned his attack on Miss Browne, on a country lane in Silsden, West Yorkshire, only because he was disturbed by a passing motorist.
The bloodied schoolgirl staggered across fields and was helped by a man in a caravan who took her home, before she was rushed to hospital.
According to forensic tests, the attack may have been carried out with a claw hammer – the same weapon used by Sutcliffe for some of his killings.
Nobody has ever been convicted of the attack on Miss Browne, although Sutcliffe – serving a whole-life tariff behind bars – previously admitted the crime in an interview with former West Yorkshire Police chief constable Keith Hellawell in 1992.
The Crown Prosecution Service did not believe it was in the public interest to pursue a further prosecution at the time. But the crime is among 17 reopened cold cases, about which Sutcliffe has been questioned.
On the Broadmoor tape, the killer recounted his attack on Miss Browne, saying: ‘She didn’t look 15, she looked about 19 or 20.
‘She was walking slowly up this lane. I thought, she’s probably one of these prostitutes.’
He appeared to laugh during the recording, then continued: ‘I hit her with a branch or something… I was thinking of bumping her off and this voice said, “Stop, stop, it’s a mistake”.’
Sutcliffe killed his first victim, Wilma McCann, 28, in October the same year, bludgeoning her with a hammer in Leeds.
He then struck across Yorkshire and Greater Manchester before finally being arrested in Sheffield in January 1981.