Meet Peter Sutcliffe – a man compared to Jack the Ripper for his cold-blooded killing style.
A monster, who claimed he was “cleaning up the streets” by bludgeoning at least 13 women with a hammer and then repeatedly stabbing them with a screwdriver.
Despite the “Yorkshire Ripper” investigation involving thousands of police officers, 2.5 million hours spent combing through paperwork, and thirty thousand statements taken, the West Yorkshire police failed to catch the culprit for almost six years.
The Yorkshire Ripper’s reign of terror began in 1975 when Sutcliffe killed his first known victim, Wilma Mary McCann. Sutcliffe struck McCann across the back of the head twice and repeatedly stabbed her with a sharpened screwdriver.
150 officers of the West Yorkshire Police were called to assist in the search for the killer.
The Yorkshire Ripper struck again in 1976, attacking Emily Monica Jackson and Marcella Claxton.
Officers working on the Ripper’s case were convinced that Sutcliffe was exclusively targeting sex workers, as both Jackson and McCann had been attacked while soliciting for business.
In a press conference, Jim Hobson, a senior detective, said that the Yorkshire Ripper “made it clear that he hates prostitutes. Many people do. We, as a police force, will continue to arrest prostitutes. But the Ripper is now killing innocent girls. That indicates your mental state and that you are in urgent need of medical attention. You have made your point. Give yourself up before another innocent woman dies.”
It was the murder of teenager Jayne MacDonald, described as a “respectable young girl,” that finally marked a change in the police’s attitude towards the killer and boosted their efforts to find him.
However, it took the investigators four more years and eleven more bodies to come close to catching the Yorkshire Ripper.
Yet in the end, Sutcliffe’s arrest was more of an accident than anything else.
On January 2, 1981, probationary constable Robert Hydes arrested Sutcliffe for having false number plates. Before being taken to the police station, Sutcliffe excused himself under the pretense of needing to relieve himself and stashed a knife, hammer, and rope behind an oil storage tank.
The following day, Sergeant Robert Ring decided to return to the scene of the arrest and discovered the stashed weapons.
Two days after the arrest, Sutcliffe confessed to being the Yorkshire Ripper, bringing an end to years of terror for the women of the north of England.
