COPYING JACK THE RIPPER   When the savagely-mutilated body of Wilma McCann, a
28-year-old prostitute, was found on 30 October, 1975, on playing fields in Only Wilma’s four children and a handful of friends mourned
her wretched end. The honest citizens of However, Dennis Hoban, the 48 year old head of During the next five years the man who came to known as ‘
the Yorkshire Ripper’ struck many times, killing 12 more women and maiming
seven a terrifying, shadowy figure who brought near hysteria to the cobbled
streets of West Yorkshire and who sparked off the biggest police hunt of the
century. His grim nicknamed reminiscent of Mrs. Jackson‘s body, too, was dreadfully mutilated.
Repeated blows from a blunt instrument had stove in the back of the skull and
the bloodstained trunk was punctured by 50 cruciform-shaped stab wounds, caused
by a sharpened Phillip’s type screw driver. Chief Superintendent Hoban appealed to the public: I can’t
stress strongly enough that it is vital we catch this brutal killer before he
brings tragedy to another family.’ If the first murder had been virtually ignored, the second
was given big play by the press. And it was George Hill, of the Daily Express
who coined the soubriquet ‘The Yorkshire Ripper’. On 8 February 1977, the Ripper killed again. His victim,
another prostitute, was 28-year-old Irene Richardson, whose stabbed body was
found in Less than three months later the Ripper’s grim ‘score’ rose
to four and, once again, the victim was a prostitute, Tina Atkinson, aged 32,
who was found battered to death on 24 April. She was on the bed of her flat in
the Lumb Lane area of Bradford, a ‘red light’ district smaller than Leeds’s
Chapeltown, but with equally bad reputation. As in the three previous killings, the Ripper had left
precious few clues for the police beyond his ‘trademark’ of hammer blows to the
skull. Of the few clues, however, one was vital: the footprints made by a boot,
which exactly matched a print found at the scene of Emily Jackson’s murder. It was useful break for the weary and bewildered CID men,
but they were still being hampered by lack of public concern. What they needed
was something that would bring forward witnesses who, up to then, had refused
to get involved on the grounds that the victims were only prostitutes.’ They got what they wanted on the morning of Sunday 26 June,
1977, but there was not a policeman in the Jayne MacDonald was found battered and stabbed to death in
a children’s playground in the Heart of Chapeltown. But Jayne, just 16, blonde
and with film star good looks, was no prostitute- just a happy teenager, ruthlessly
cut down by the Ripper while walking home after a night out with a boyfriend.
Now, at last, after almost two years of working against public apathy, the
police had an ‘innocent’ victim on their hands. From that moment there was no shortage of information. On
the contrary, the Ripper squad began slowly to founder under the weight of facts,
theories and suppositions from the general public. By then six more women had been murdered: Jean Jordan, aged
21, prostitute, murdered and hideously mutilated on allotments in Three months before the slaying of ‘Babs’ Leach, a
sensational twist to the Ripper inquiry had echoed all round the world, giving
newspapers, television and radio one of the most bizarre crime stories ever to
hit the headlines. It was in the form of a cassette tape, played at press
conference on 26 June by assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield, head of
West Yorkshire CID. I’m Jack,’ said the voice on the tape in a chilling
monotone. ‘I see you are still having no luck catching me. I have the greatest
respect for you, George, but, Lord, you are nearer catching me than four years
ago when I started. I reckon your boys are letting you down, George. You can’t
be much good, can ya? The only time they came near catching me was a few months
back in Chapeltown when I was disturbed. Even then it was uniform copper, not a
detective. I warned you in March that I’d strike again. Sorry it
wasn’t At the rate I’m going I should be in the book of records. I
think It’s up to eleven now isn’t it. Well I’ll keep on going for quite a while
yet. I can’t see myself being nicked just yet. Even if you do near I’ll
probably top myself first. Well, it’s been nice chatting to you, George. Yours, Jack
the Ripper. No good looking for fingerprints. You should know by now
it’s as clean as a whistle. See you soon. Bye hopes you like the catchy tune at
the end. Ha! Ha! Ha! The music that followed was the six-line reprise reprise of
Thank you for being a Friend’, a 1978 song by As the music faded, George Oldfield said: I believe that we
have now got the break we have been waiting for.’ But that was where it all started to go wrong. The Ripper
inquiry went off course at the tragic tangent. For the voice on tape was
identified by dialect experts as belonging to someone from the Castle town
district of Sunderland. From that moment detectives manning the $ 4,000,000
hunt for the Ripper began looking for a man with Geordie accent… Peter William Sutcliffe did not have a Geordie accent. His
voice, slightly high pitch and hesitant, was flat with the broad vowels of his
native town of There, on the fringes of the Bronte country, Sutcliff was
born on June 2, 1946, the first child of John and Cathleen Sutcliffe who lived
in one-up, one-down cottage in Heaton Row, by the edge of the wild moors above
Bingley. Peter was a shy boy, prone to blushing in the company of
girls, though his police manners were much admired by his parents’ neighbors.
He left Sutcliffe grave digging career is littered with revolting
stories of desecration the grave-robbing that tell of the dark shadows that
were already gathering in his mind. Often he outraged his workmates by
inferring with corpses, sometimes to steal rings or gold teeth, but other times
simply because he seemed to enjoy handling dead bodies. Eventually he managed to get himself attached to the
mortuary as an attendant and would regale his friends with descriptions of the
cadavers he had seen cut open for post mortem examination. Often, after a night
in the pub, he would rattle the mortuary keys and ask if anyone wanted to see
the latest body. There were never any takers. Sutcliffe was married on 10 August, 1974, at Clayton
Baptist Chapel, Bradford. It was a double celebration for that day was also the
birthday of his bride, Sonia Szurma, an attractive 24-year-old teacher, daughter
of eastern European refugees. A shy girl, Sonia looked more demure than usual
at her wedding. She could have not known that her groom had ended the previous
evening’s stag night celebrations by taking himself down to Fourteen months after marrying Sonia, Sutcliffe killed
Wilma McCann, and those infamous districts became slaughter house where woman
lived in terror and police sought desperately for a murderer with a Geordie
accent. They had one gift of a clue a brand new L5 note found in
hand bag of the Ripper’s first One of the men interviewed was a lorry driver called
Sutcliffe. In the cab of his lorry was pined this handwritten notice: ‘In this
truck is a man whose latent genius, if unleashed, would rock the nation, whose
dynamic energy would overpower those around him. Better let him sleep.’ If the detectives trying to trace the owner of the L 5 note
saw the notice they did not read any significance into it for Peter Sutcliffe
was questioned and cleared. He was to be interviewed another eight times throughout the
remaining span of the Ripper enquiry … and each time he was cleared and
released. His workmates at By now, under the influence of the intelligent,
well-educated Sonia, Sutcliffe was busy bettering himself. Always immaculately
dressed in crisp, fresh overalls, he had reputation as one of the But strange things happened behind the respectable lace
curtains at Number 6. there was domestic friction with the tiny, frail Sonia
often heard ranting and shouting at her embarrassed husband, ignoring his pleas
to keep her voice down ‘in case the neighbors hear’. It is bizarre concept the monstrously evil killer as
henpecked husband, but in Sutcliffe’s case it was true. More than one detective
on the Ripper’s squad has said: ‘Every time he killed, he was really killing
Sonia.’ The faithful and devoted husband, the loyal and hard
working employee, the polite and helpful friend, these were the faces that
Peter Sutcliffe showed to the rest of the world. The face of friend was one
reserved for darkness and his victim. At first they had been prostitutes and,
in perverted way, he could try to justify their deaths, as did the original
Jack the Ripper, by claiming that he was ridding the street of ‘filth’. But then had come the murder of Jayne Mc Donald. She had
been no whore. Nor had Jo Whitaker or Babs Leach, victim s number ten and
eleven. Nor had several of women who had survived his attacks. So now there
could be no pretence of being a crusading ‘street-cleaner’. Was he seeking to punish the domineering Sonia? Or was he
seeking revenge on all woman kind? For in 1972 Sutcliffe, his two sisters and
brothers, had been astounded and horrified to discover that their mother,
Kathleen, the woman they called ‘the Angel’, had been secret affair. Highly
religious, prudish, Kathleen had slipped from the pedestal on which her doting
children had placed her. Perhaps it is significant that the twelfth victim was, like
the late Mrs. Sutcliffe (she died in November 1978), middle aged and highly
respectable. Margo walls were 47, a former sergeant in the WRAC, an unmarried
civil servant who lived alone in Pudsey, a small town between Leeds and After working late on 22 August, 1980, she set off to walk
the half mile from her office to her home –and met Sutcliffe. He reared out of
the dark shadows of a gateway and aimed a blow at her head although stunned,
Miss Walls fought back savagely, punching and clawing at her attacker. But the
slightly built Sutcliffe was strong and managed to get a garrote around her
neck. When Margo was dead, Sutcliffe
stripped her body, dragged her up the driveway –that of a local magistrate and
buried her beneath a pile grass cuttings. Police investigating the murder decided that it was not the
work of the Ripper. The garrote, they said, was not his style. But three months
later, on Monday 17 November, 1980, the Ripper struck again and this time there
was no doubt in the minds of the investigating detectives. The victim was Jacqueline Hill, a 20-year old student at Sutcliffe, who minutes before had been eating chicken and
chips from a nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken shop, leapt out of his parked Rover
and rained hammer blows on the back of her head. She went down without a sound,
lying limply as her attacker dragged her across The killing of yet another respectable victim, particularly
in the straight-laced heart of middle class Headingley, caused a more violent
eruption of public fury and indignation than before. On 25 November he announced the formation of a ‘super
squad’ –a think tank of senior officers drawn from other forces. Assistant
Chief Constable George Oldfield was, effectively, taken off the case, although
he remained head of West Yorkshire CID. Then Hobson, in statement that was almost clairvoyant,
announced that the Ripper was caught ‘it will be by an ordinary uniformed
copper, going about his normal duties’. That is exactly what happened on the night of Friday, 2 January,
1981, as Peter Sutcliffe prepared to kill his fourteenth victim –a coloured The man who had called himself ‘Dave’ suddenly whispered to
Ava: ‘I’m scared –really.’ But it was Ava who was scared; somehow she knew
beyond doubt that this ‘punter’ intended her harm. At that moment the police arrived, a sergeant and a PC in
Panda car, making a routine check on the cars parked in the leafy lovers’ lane.
‘Dave’ was reduced to near panic. Ava, pleased for the first time in her life to see a
policeman, was relieved to be taken to the police station for questioning about
her ‘lover’s’ identity and for him to be quizzed as to why the Rover was
carrying false number plates. It was during that interview that Sergeant Arthur Armitage,
after studying the man who claimed to be Peter Williams’, suddenly spoke up. In
his broad On Friday, 22 May, 1981, Peter William Sutcliffe stood in the
dock at the Old Bailey’s Number One court and listened impassively as the jury
found him guilty of 13 murders. Mr. Justice Boreham sentenced him to life imprisonment on
each count, adding ‘I shall recommend to the home Secretary that the minimum
period which should elapse before he orders your release shall be 30 years.
That is a long period, an unusually long period in my judgment, but you, I
believe, are an unusually dangerous man. I express the hope that, when I have
said life imprisonment, it will mean precisely that.’ Sutcliffe is currently serving that sentence in the maximum
security wing of Parkhurst Prison on the The cruel hoaxer who threw the whole Ripper hunt awry with
his mocking Geordie voice –and so helped kill three women –remains free. |
