Peter Sutcliffe

Peter Sutcliffe
Sutcliffe in 1981
Background information
Birth name:	Peter William Sutcliffe
Alias(es):	The Yorkshire Ripper, Peter William Coonan
Born:	2 June 1946 (1946-06-02) (age 63) Bingley, United Kingdom
Penalty:	Life
Killings
Number of victims:	13
Span of killings:	30 October 1975–17 November 1980
Country:	United Kingdom
Date apprehended:	2 January 1981

Peter William Sutcliffe (born 2 June 1946 in Bingley, United Kingdom) is an English serial killer who was dubbed The Yorkshire Ripper. Sutcliffe was convicted in 1981 for murdering 13 women, and attacking several others. He is currently serving life imprisonment in Broadmoor Hospital. Sutcliffe began using the name Peter William Coonan at some point after his conviction.^[1]

Early life

Sutcliffe was the son of John and Kathleen Sutcliffe. Reportedly a loner at school, he left Silcoates School at the age of 15 and took a series of menial jobs, including two stints as a grave-digger during the 1960s. Sutcliffe worked at the factory of Baird's TV between November 1971 and April 1973 on the packaging line. He left when they asked him to go on the road as a salesman. After leaving Baird's, he worked nightshifts at the Britannia works of Anderton International between April 1973 and February 1975, when he took redundancy. He used the pay-off to gain an HGV licence on 4 June 1975, and began working as a driver on 29 September of that year, driving HGVs for a tyre firm. However, he was sacked for poor time-keeping on 5 March 1976. He was unemployed until October 1976, when he found another job as an HGV driver for T & WH Clark (Holdings Ltd.) on the Canal Road Industrial Estate, between Shipley and Bradford.

Sutcliffe frequented prostitutes as a young man, and it has been speculated that a bad experience with one helped fuel his violent hatred of women.^[2]

He first met Czech-born Sonia Szurma on St Valentine's Day in 1967. They married on 10 August 1974. His wife suffered a number of miscarriages over the next few years, 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 buy their first house, in Heaton, Bradford, where they moved on 26 September 1977.

Criminal record

Victims

1

2

3

4

5

7

8

10

11

12

13

Yorkshire Ripper locations within West Yorkshire (Victims 6 & 9 are off this map to the south west.)

Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering the following 13 victims:

1975

Sutcliffe committed his first known assault in Keighley on the night of 5 July 1975. He attacked Anna Rogulskyj (aged 36), who was walking alone, striking her unconscious with a ball-pein hammer and slashing her stomach with a knife. Disturbed by a neighbour, he left without killing her. Anna Rogulskyj survived after extensive medical attention. Rogulskyj suffered emotional scars from the attack as well.

Sutcliffe attacked Olive Smelt (aged 46) in Halifax in August, using the same modus operandi, striking her from behind and using a knife to slash her above her buttocks. Again he was interrupted, and left his victim badly injured but still alive. Like Rogulskyj, Smelt also suffered emotional scars from the attack, including clinical depression.

On 27 August, Sutcliffe attacked Tracy Browne (aged 14) in Silsden. She was struck from behind and hit on the head five times while walking in a country lane. Sutcliffe was not convicted of this attack, but confessed to it in 1992.

His next victim, Wilma McCann (aged 28), from the Chapeltown district of Leeds, a mother of four, was killed on 30 October. Sutcliffe struck her twice with a hammer before stabbing her 15 times in the neck, chest, and abdomen. Traces of semen were found on the back of her pants. An extensive inquiry, involving 150 police officers and 11,000 interviews, failed to uncover Sutcliffe. One of McCann's daughters committed suicide in December 2007, reportedly after suffering years of torment over her mother's death.^[16]

1976

Sutcliffe did not kill again until January 1976, when he stabbed 42-year-old housewife Emily Jackson 51 times in Leeds. Financial problems had led to the mother using the family van to exchange sexual favours for money. Sutcliffe hit her on the head with a hammer and then used a sharpened screwdriver to stab her in the neck, chest, and abdomen. Sutcliffe also stamped on her thigh, leaving behind an impression of his boots.

He attacked Marcella Claxton, a 20-year-old, in Roundhay Park, Leeds, on 9 May. Walking home from a party, she was given a ride by Sutcliffe. When she later got out of the car to urinate, Sutcliffe hit her from behind with a hammer. She was left alive.

1977

Sutcliffe's next murder took place on 5 February 1977. He attacked Irene Richardson (aged 28), another Chapeltown prostitute, in Roundhay Park, bludgeoning her to death with a hammer. Once she was dead, he mutilated her corpse with a knife. Tyre tracks left near the murder scene resulted in an enormous list of possible suspect vehicles.

Two months later, on 23 April 1977, he killed Patricia "Tina" Atkinson (aged 32), a Bradford prostitute, at her flat, where police found a bootprint on the bedclothes. After another two months, Sutcliffe committed another murder in Chapeltown; his youngest victim, Jayne MacDonald (aged 16), on 26 June, was not a prostitute, and in the public perception, her death showed that every woman was a potential victim. Sutcliffe seriously assaulted Maureen Long (aged 42) in Bradford in July; interrupted, he left her for dead. A witness misidentified the make of his car. Over 300 police officers working the case amassed 12,500 statements and checked thousands of cars, without result.

Sutcliffe killed a Manchester prostitute, Jean Jordan (aged 20), on 9 October 1977. Her body was not found for 10 days but had obviously been moved several days after death. In a later confession, Sutcliffe stated he had realised a new five pound note he had given her was traceable, and had returned to her body, left on a piece of wasteland behind a Manchester cemetery, in an to attempt to retrieve it, but unable to do so, mutliated her decomposing body with a shard of glass he found. The recovery of the note hidden inside a 'secret apartment' in her handbag offered a valuable piece of evidence. Sutcliffe had given the woman the £5. As the note was new and was traced to branches of the Midland Bank in Shipley and Bingley. Extensive replication by police of how a branch worked over a three-week period resulted in pinning down the note supplied to one of 8,000 local employees as part of their wages. Over three months, the police interviewed 5,000 men, including Sutcliffe, but did not connect him to the crime. As Sutcliffe had returned to the body a week after the killing, and, unable to find the handbag, tried to remove Jordan's head with a broken pane of glass and a hacksaw, in an attempt to distract the police by disguising that Jordan's death was a result of a Ripper attack. He did this after hosting a family party at his new home. Jordan's body was discovered by actor Bruce Jones. At the time of the death, Jones was a local dairy worker. He had an allotment on the adjoining land to where the body was found, and had been looking for disused housebricks when he made the discovery.

Sutcliffe attacked another Leeds prostitute, Marilyn Moore (aged 25) on 14 December. She survived, and provided police with a description of her attacker. Tyre tracks found at the scene matched those from an earlier attack.

1978

Despite this, the police withdrew their intensive search for the person who received the £5 note in January 1978. Although Sutcliffe was interviewed about the £5 note, he was not investigated further. He would ultimately be contacted, and disregarded, by the Ripper Squad many more times. In that month, Sutcliffe killed again, attacking a Bradford prostitute, Yvonne Pearson (aged 21), this time hiding the body under a discarded sofa so that it was not found until March. He killed a Huddersfield prostitute, Helen Rytka (aged 18), on the night of 31 January; her body was uncovered three days later.

After a two-month hiatus, Sutcliffe killed again, attacking Vera Millward (aged 40) in the car park of Manchester Royal Infirmary on 16 May.

1979

Almost a year passed before he struck again, during which time his mother Kathleen died on 8 November 1978 at the age of 59.

On 4 April 1979, Sutcliffe killed Josephine Whitaker (aged 19), a bank clerk, in Halifax; he assaulted her on Savile Park Moor as she was walking home. Despite new forensic evidence, the police efforts were diverted for several months into a fruitless search for a man with a Wearside accent, which was pinned down to the Castletown area of Sunderland, following a hoax tape message taunting Superintendent George Oldfield, who was leading the search.

The hoaxer (dubbed "Wearside Jack") had sent two letters to the police boasting of his crimes in 1978 signed "Jack The Ripper" and claimed a murder (that of 26-year-old Joan Harrison) in Preston in November 1975. On 20 October 2005, John Samuel Humble, an unemployed alcoholic and long-time resident of the Ford Estate area of Sunderland (a mile away from Castletown), was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice in response to his sending of the hoax letters and tape, and remanded in custody. On 21 March 2006 he was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Sutcliffe killed Barbara Leach (aged 20) in September. Leach was a Bradford student murdered near the university behind her lodgings, at the back of Ashgrove. It was his sixteenth attack. Yet again, the murder of a woman who was not a prostitute alarmed the public and prompted an expensive publicity campaign, which pushed the Wearside connection. Even with this false lead, Sutcliffe was re-interviewed on at least two occasions 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 occasions.

1980

In April 1980 Sutcliffe was arrested for drink driving. While awaiting trial on this charge, he killed two more women, Marguerite Walls (aged 47) on the night of 20 August and Jacqueline Hill (aged 20), a student at the University of Leeds, on the night of 17 November 1980. He also attacked two other women who survived: Dr. Upadhya Bandara (aged 34) in Leeds on 24 September and Theresa Sykes (aged 16) in Huddersfield on the night of 5 November. On 25 November, one of Sutcliffe's friends reported him to the police as a suspect, but this information vanished into the enormous volumes already created. Sutcliffe's friend assumed that they had investigated him and cleared him.

1981 arrest and trial

Millgarth Police Station in Leeds City Centre, where the operation to find the Yorkshire Ripper was conducted.

On 2 January 1981, Sutcliffe was stopped by the police with prostitute Olivia Reivers (aged 24) in the driveway of Light Trades House, Melbourne Avenue, Broomhill, Sheffield. He was arrested, on grounds of having fitted his car with false number 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 the next day of a knife, hammer and rope he had disposed of at the time and place of his arrest along Melbourne Avenue and a second knife he had placed in the toilet cistern at the police station, having used the pretext of needing to urinate, increased police interest, and they obtained a search warrant for his home at 6 Garden Lane in the Heaton district of Bradford and brought his wife in for questioning.

When Sutcliffe was stripped of his clothing at the police station, he was discovered to be wearing a V-neck sweater under his trousers; the arms had been pulled over his legs, so that the V-neck exposed his groin; the elbows were padded to protect his knees as, presumably, he knelt over his victims' corpses. The sexual implications of this outfit were held to be obvious, but this fact was not communicated to the public until disclosure in a book by writer Michael Bilton, published in 2003, called Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper.

After two days of intensive questioning, he suddenly, on the afternoon of 4 January 1981, declared he was the Ripper. Over the next day, Sutcliffe calmly described his many attacks, only weeks later claiming to have been told by God to murder the women. The only emotion he displayed was when he talked about the murder of Jayne MacDonald and when he was questioned about the murder of Joan Harrison, which he vehemently denied. He was charged at Dewsbury on 5 January.

At his trial, Sutcliffe pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of murder, but guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The basis of his defence was his claim that he was the tool of God's will. Sutcliffe first claimed to hear voices while working as a gravedigger, that ultimately would 'order' him to begin killing prostitutes. He claimed that the voices originated from a headstone of a deceased Polish man, Bronislaw Zapolski,^[17] and furthermore that the 'voices' were that of God.^[18][19]

He also pleaded guilty to seven counts of attempted murder. On the basis of four psychiatrists' reports diagnosing paranoid schizophrenia, the prosecution proposed accepting the plea. However, the trial judge, Mr Justice Boreham, demanded an unusually detailed explanation of the prosecution reasoning, and after a two-hour representation by the Attorney-General Sir Michael Havers, a 90-minute lunch break and a further 40 minutes of legal discussion, he rejected the diminished responsibility plea, insisting that the case should be dealt with by a jury. The trial proper was set to commence on 5 May 1981.

His trial lasted two weeks; despite the efforts of James Chadwin QC, his counsel, he was found guilty of murder on all counts and sentenced to life imprisonment. The trial judge spoke of his belief that Sutcliffe was beyond redemption and hoped that he would never leave prison, and recommended that a minimum term of 30 years should be served before parole could be even considered. This recommendation meant that Sutcliffe was unlikely to be freed until at least 2011, at the age of 65.

After his trial, Sutcliffe admitted two further attacks to detectives. It was decided at the time, however, that prosecution for these offences was "not in the public interest". West Yorkshire Police have made it clear that the female victims wish to remain anonymous.

Prison and Broadmoor Hospital

Sutcliffe began his sentence at HMP Parkhurst on 22 May 1981. Despite being found sane 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 for the first time. The attack was carried out by James Costello, a 35-year-old career criminal from Glasgow with several convictions for violence. On 10 January 1983, he followed Sutcliffe into the recess of F2, the hospital wing at Parkhurst Prison. He plunged a broken coffee jar twice into the left side of Sutcliffe's face, creating four separate wounds requiring a total of 30 stitches.^[20] In March 1984 Sutcliffe was finally sent to Broadmoor Hospital, under section 47 of the Mental Health Act 1983.

His wife Sonia obtained a separation from him in 1982 and a final divorce in April 1994; she went on to contest and win nine libel cases against various publications, most notably Private Eye.^[21]

On 23 February 1996, Sutcliffe was attacked in his private room in the Henley Ward of Broadmoor Hospital. Paul Wilson, a convicted robber, asked to borrow a video cassette before attempting to strangle him with the flex from a pair of stereo headphones. Two other murderers, Kenneth Erskine (the "Stockwell Strangler") and Jamie Devitt, intervened upon hearing Sutcliffe's screams.^[20]

After an attack by fellow inmate Ian Kay on 10 March 1997 with a pen, Sutcliffe lost vision in his left eye, and his right eye was severely damaged.^[22] Kay admitted he had tried to kill Sutcliffe, and was ordered to be detained in a secure mental hospital without time limit. Rumors suggested that Sutcliffe received nearly £200,000 in compensation for the attack, but West London Mental Health Trust, which runs Broadmoor Hospital, issued a statement on 18 January 2008 stating that no compensation had been paid in relation to this incident.^[23] In 2003, reports surfaced that Sutcliffe had developed diabetes.^[24]

Despite being given a whole life tariff by successive Home Secretaries, Sutcliffe could still be released from custody if the parole board decides that he is no longer a danger to the public. He was originally sentenced to a minimum of 30 years, so he could be released from prison in 2011 because the system under which his tariff was increased has since been declared illegal by the European Court of Human Rights and also the High Court. The main point of conflict is that the continued detention of Sutcliffe and other life prisoners is currently controlled by a politician – the Home Secretary – rather than by a member of the judiciary. A European Court of Human Rights hearing which opened in February 2007 is reviewing whether life imprisonment is a violation of human rights; if life imprisonment is outlawed, then Sutcliffe and all other prisoners serving such sentences in Europe would have their cases recalled to court for a new sentence to be set.

Sutcliffe was not on a Home Office list, published in late 2006, of 35 murderers in England and Wales who had been told by various judges and politicians that they should never be released.

Sutcliffe's father died in 2004 and was cremated. On 17 January 2005, Sutcliffe was allowed to visit Grange over Sands, where the ashes had been scattered. The decision to allow the temporary release was initiated by David Blunkett and later ratified by Charles Clarke when he took over the role of Home Secretary. Sutcliffe was accompanied by four members of the hospital staff. Despite the passage of 25 years since the Ripper murders, Sutcliffe's visit was still the focus of front-page tabloid headlines.^[25]

On 22 December 2007, Sutcliffe was attacked once again. A fellow inmate named Patrick Sureda lunged at him with a metal cutlery knife. Sutcliffe flung himself backwards and the blade missed his right eye, instead stabbing him in the cheek.^[26]

Controversy

West Yorkshire Police were criticised for being inadequately prepared for an investigation on this scale. The case was one of the largest ever investigations by a UK police force and predated the use of computers in criminal cases. The information on suspects was stored on hand-written index cards. Aside from difficulties in storing and accessing such a bulk of paperwork (the floor of the incident room had to be reinforced to cope with the weight of paperwork), it was difficult for officers to overcome the information overload of such a large manual system. Sutcliffe was interviewed nine times, but all information the police had about the case was stored in paper form, making cross referencing a difficult task. This fact was compounded by the television appeal for information, which generated thousands more documents to process. The police were also criticised for being too focused on the Wearside tape and letters, using them as a point of elimination rather than as a line of enquiry, which allowed Sutcliffe to remain at large for longer, as he did not fit the profile of the sender of the tape or letters. The official response to these problems ultimately led to the implementation of the forerunner of HOLMES 1 (the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System) Computer system, firstly through the development of MICA (Major Incident Computer Application) which was developed between West Yorkshire Police and ISIS Computer Services.

In 1988, the mother of the last victim argued in Court that the police had failed to use reasonable care in apprehending the murderer of her daughter in Hill v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police 1988. The findings of that case included that police enjoy a limited immunity from criminal negligence suits.^[27]

The Byford Report

On 1 June 2006, the (UK) Home Office released Inspector of Constabulary Sir Lawrence Byford's 1981 report of an official inquiry into the Ripper case. Part of the document entitled "Description of suspects, photofits and other assaults" remains censored by the Home Office. Also partly censored was a section on Sutcliffe’s "immediate associates".

Referring to the period between 1969, when Sutcliffe first came to the attention of police, and 1975, the year of the murder of Wilma McCann, the report states: "There is a curious and unexplained lull in Sutcliffe's criminal activities and there is the possibility that he carried out other attacks on prostitutes and unaccompanied women during that period." In 1969 Sutcliffe, described in the Byford Report as an "otherwise unremarkable young man", came to the notice of police on two occasions in connection with incidents involving prostitutes. The report said that it was clear he had on at least one occasion attacked a Bradford prostitute with a blackjack weapon. Also in 1969 he was arrested in the red light district of the city in possession of a hammer. However, rather than believing Sutcliffe might use the hammer as an offensive weapon, the arresting officers assumed he was a burglar and he was charged with "going equipped for stealing."^[28]

Sir Lawrence's report states: "We feel it is highly improbable that the crimes in respect of which Sutcliffe has been charged and convicted are the only ones attributable to him. This feeling is reinforced by examining the details of a number of assaults on women since 1969 which, in some ways, clearly fall into the established pattern of Sutcliffe’s overall modus-operandi. I hasten to add that I feel sure that the senior police officers in the areas concerned are also mindful of this possibility but, in order to ensure full account is taken of all the information available, I have arranged for an effective liaison to take place."^[28] Police identified a number of attacks which matched Sutcliffe's modus operandi and tried to question the killer, but he was never charged with other crimes.

The Byford Report’s major findings were contained in a summary published by the then Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, but this is the first time precise details of the bungled police investigation have been disclosed. Sir Lawrence described delays in following up vital tip-offs from Trevor Birdsall, an associate of Sutcliffe’s since 1966. On 25 November 1980, Birdsall sent an anonymous letter to police, the text of which ran as follows:

This letter was marked "Priority No 1". An index card was created on the basis of the letter and a policewoman found Sutcliffe already had three existing index cards in the records. But "for some inexplicable reason", said the Byford Report, the papers remained in a filing tray in the incident room until the murderer’s arrest on 2 January the following year.^[28]

Birdsall visited Bradford Police Station the day after sending the letter to repeat his misgivings about Sutcliffe; he added the information that he had been with Sutcliffe when Sutcliffe got out of a car to pursue a woman with whom he had had a bar room dispute in Halifax on 16 August 1975. This was the date and place of the Olive Smelt attack. A report compiled on this visit was lost, despite a "comprehensive search" which took place after Sutcliffe’s arrest, according to the report.^[28] Sir Lawrence said: "The failure to take advantage of Birdsall’s anonymous letter and his visit to the police station was yet again a stark illustration of the progressive decline in the overall efficiency of the major incident room. It resulted in Sutcliffe being at liberty for more than a month when he might conceivably have been in custody. Thankfully, there is no reason to think he committed any further murderous assaults within that period."^[28]

References

Further reading

• Bilton, Michael. Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. HarperCollins, 2003. ISBN 0007169639.
• Cross, Roger. Yorkshire Ripper. HarperCollins Canada, Limited, 1981. ISBN 0586055266.
• Burn, Gordon. Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son: The Story of Peter Sutcliffe. Heinemann, 1984. Original from the University of Michigan.
• McCann, Richard. Just a Boy: The True Story of A Stolen Childhood. Ebury Press, 2005. ISBN 0091898226.
• Ward Jouve, Nicole. The Streetcleaner: The Yorkshire Ripper Case on Trial. Kampmann, 1986. ISBN 0714528471.

External links

• The Yorkshire Ripper website
• Suggestion that Sutcliffe had other victims
• Google Earth/Maps overlay showing significant locations in the Ripper case