| Table of contents |
|
2 The attacks 3 Sutcliffe's arrest and trial 4 Prison |
Peter William Sutcliffe was born in Bingley, Yorkshire the son of a mill-worker. Reportedly a loner at school he left formal education at the age of fifteen and took a series of manual jobs, including a stint as a grave-digger, before settling into a job on the nightshift at a local factory.
He met Sonia Szurma in 1966 and they married in 1974. Shortly after his marriage he was made redundant and used the pay-off to gain a HGV license in June, 1975 and began working as a driver in September. His wife suffered a number of miscarriages and eventually the couple were informed that she would not be able to have children. Shortly after this his wife returned to a teacher-training course. When she completed the course in 1977 and began teaching the couple used the extra money to get their first house, in Bradford.
The first known assault by Sutcliffe was in Keighley on the night of July 5, 1975. He attacked a lone woman, striking her unconscious with a ball-peen hammer and slashing her stomach with a knife, disturbed by an neighbour he left. The woman survived after extensive medical attention. He attacked another woman in Halifax in August with the same modus operandi and again was disturbed and left his victim badly injured.
His next victim, Wilma McCann of Leeds, he killed on October 30, 1975 striking her twice with a hammer before stabbing her fifteen times. An extensive inquiry, involving 150 police officers and 11,000 interviews did not uncover Sutcliffe. He did not kill again until January, 1976, stabbing a woman 51 times.
Due to repeated tardiness Sutcliffe lost his first driving job in March, 1976 and did not find another until October. He assaulted another woman in Roundhay Park in Leeds on May 9, 1976, another prostitute, he struck her with a hammer and left her with £5. He did not kill again until February, 1977 attacking another Chapeltown prostitue in Roundhay Park and this time killing her with a series of weighty hammer blows, followed by a post-mortem stabbing. Tyre-tracks left near the murder scene resulted in an enormous list of possible suspect vehicles.
He killed a Bradford prostitute in April and a young girl in Chapeltown in June, 1977. The death of the young girl, rather than the prostitutes', reinvigorated the police inquiry but did not bring them closer to Sutcliffe. He seriously assaulted another woman in Leeds in July, interrupted he left her for dead. She offered a reasonable description of her assailant, but another witness misidentified the make of his car. The police had over 300 officers working the case and amassed 12,500 statements and checked 1000s of cars, without result.
After a break of almost 18 months Sutcliffe killed a Manchester prostitute in October, 1977. Her body was not found for ten days, but the recovery of her handbag offered a valuable piece of evidence, Sutcliffe had given the woman £5. The note was new and was traced to banks in Shipley and Bingley and from there into the wages of 8,000 local employees. Over three months the police interviewed 5,000 men, including Sutcliffe, but did not connect him.
Sutcliffe attacked another Leeds prostitute in December, 1977. She survived and offered another reasonable description of her attacker and tyre-tracks found matched those of an earlier attack. Despite this the police withdrew their intensive search for the person who recieved the £5 in January, 1978. In that month Sutcliffe killed again attacking a Bradford prostitue, this time hiding the body so that it was not found until March. He killed a Huddersfield prostitute in late January, her body was uncovered three days later.
After a two month hiatus Sutcliffe killed again, attacking a middle-aged woman in the car park of the Manchester Royal Infirmary on May 16. Then almost a year passed before he struck again, during this time his mother died. On April 4, 1979 he killed a young woman in Halifax, a bank clerk, he assaulted her in a park as she was walking home. Despite new forensic clues the police efforts were diverted for several months into a fruitless search for a man with a Geordie accent following a hoax tape message. The same hoaxer had sent two letters to the police boasting of his crimes in 1978 signed the "Jack The Ripper" and claimed a murder in Preston in November, 1975.
Sutcliffe killed a Bradford student in September, 1979, his sixteenth attack. Yet again the death of a woman other than a prostitute aroused the public and prompted an expensive publicity campaign, which unfortunately pushed the Geordie connection. Even with this false lead Sutcliffe was re-interviewed on at least two occassions in 1979, but despite matching several forensic clues and being on the list of just 300 names in connection with the £5 note he was not strongly suspected. In total Sutcliffe was interviewed by the police on nine occassions.
In April 1980 he was arrested for drunken driving. While awaiting trial on this charge he killed two more women, one in August and one in November 1980, and attacked two other women who survived. Following the November murder one of Sutcliffe's friends reported him to the police as a suspect, this information vanished into the enormous volumes already created.
In January 1981 he was stopped by the police in Sheffield while in his car with a prostitute, he was arrested. Having fitted his car with false plates he was transferred to Dewsbury police station in connection with this offence. At Dewsbury he was questioned in relation to the Yorkshire Ripper case as he matched so many of the physical characteristics known. The discovery of a knife, hammer and rope he had tried to dispose of increased police interest and they obtained a search warrant for his home and brought his wife in for questioning.
After two days of intensive questioning he suddenly declared he was the Ripper and over the next day calmly described his many attacks, claiming to have been told by God to murder the women. His was charged on January 6 and went to trial in May.
His trial lasted just two weeks, he was found guilty of thirteen counts of murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he served a minimum of thirty years. His appeal was denied.
He began his sentence at Parkhurst prison. Despite not being found insane at his trial he was soon diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia. Attempts to send him to a secure psychiatric unit were initially blocked. During his time at Parkhurst he was seriously assaulted. His wife obtained a separation from him in 1982 and a final divorce in 1994, Sonia went on to contest and win nine libel cases against various publications. In 1984 he was finally sent to Broadmoor hospital. In an attack from a fellow inmate in 1997 his eyesight was severely damaged, his attacker was charged with attempted murder.Early life
The attacks
Sutcliffe's arrest and trial
Prison