By early Sunday afternoon, Sutcliffe knew that he should not have been detained for the length of time he had been on a minor theft charge, and when the police questioned him about his movements on the night of Theresa Sykes’s attack on 5 November 1980, he began to lose the incredible calmness that he had shown throughout the 48-hour detention. Sutcliffe told them that he was positive he had arrived home by 8pm. Sonia’s recollection was different. She distinctly remembered Peter arriving home at 10pm.
Later that day, during another interview, Sutcliffe was told about the discovery of the hammer and knife as they continued to question him about the attack on Theresa Sykes. It was then that Peter Sutcliffe sat back in his chair and calmly admitted that he was the Yorkshire Ripper. Over the next 26 hours, Sutcliffe, calmly and with little display of emotion, told police officers the gruesome details of the last five years of death and mutilation. The only emotion he showed was when discussing the murder of 16-year-old Jayne McDonald. He did, however, deny the murder of Joan Harrison. Sutcliffe told police that in 1967, at the age of 20, he had heard the voice of God speak to him as he worked at Bingley cemetery. He claimed that he had first heard that voice while digging a grave. He stated that the voice had led him to a cross-shaped headstone upon which were written some Polish words. He said it was this same voice that had ordered him to kill prostitutes. Police were satisfied from what Sutcliffe had told them that he was mentally ill, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and insane. However, there was some doubt about this later.
Following his confession, Peter Sutcliffe had one request. He wanted to be the one to tell his wife Sonia. She was immediately driven from Bradford police headquarters to the Dewsbury police station. Sutcliffe sat at a small table across from Sonia as he calmly told her his shocking story. When Sonia emerged from the interview room, she appeared to be calm, not revealing any emotions. With regard to the question of him being insane, Sutcliffe had been overheard telling his wife that he might be able to reduce his sentence to as little as ten years if he could convince everyone that he was mad. In any event, Sutcliffe would face trial for murder and it would be for a jury to decide whether he was insane or not.
On 5 May 1981, Peter Sutcliffe stood trial for 13 murders. During the trial, the insanity issues surrounding Sutcliffe were put before the jury. On one side, the prosecution put forward their case to show that Sutcliffe was not insane and, on the other side, his defence attempted to convince the jury of the opposite. On Friday, 22 May 1981, Peter Sutcliffe was found guilty of all of the murders; the jury believing him not to be insane but, in fact, an evil and sadistic murderer. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 30 years before parole could even be considered. This recommendation meant that Sutcliffe was unlikely to be freed until at least 2011 at the age of 65.
Sutcliffe was later sent to Broadmoor, a high-security mental hospital, after being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. In 1983, while at Broadmoor, he was viciously attacked on several occasions by other inmates. One such attack resulted in him losing the sight in his right eye. He also developed diabetes. His wife Sonia divorced him in 1994.
Over the years, Sutcliffe’s sentence and the question of future parole have been considered by two different Home Secretaries and, despite Sutcliffe being given a whole-life tariff by them, he could still be released from custody if the parole board were to decide that he is no longer a danger to the public. The European Court of Human Rights and also the High Court have since declared the system under which his tariff was increased illegal. The main point of conflict is that the continued detention of Sutcliffe and other life prisoners in England has in recent years been reviewed. Recent government legislation has now set out new guidelines in respect of convicted persons serving life sentences. All offenders convicted of murder need to have a minimum term set. This is the minimum time that the offender will serve before eligible for parole. Up until November 2002, the Home Secretary set the minimum term, but this practice ceased following the decision in Anderson v Secretary of State [2003] that declared the practice unlawful. As a consequence, all prisoners who had already been notified of a minimum term by the Home Secretary had the right to ask the High Court to review it. The High Court could confirm it or lower it, but not increase it.
It also meant that between 25 November 2002 and 18 December 2003 no minimum terms were set, and offenders were sentenced to life imprisonment without knowing their earliest date of release. This resulted in approximately 700 serving life prisoners who had not had a minimum term set. Those cases were referred back to the High Court by the Home Secretary for a minimum term to be set administratively by a High Court Judge. These provisions now apply to all cases where the date of offence is on or after 18 December 2003. For offences dated before 18 December 2003, complex transitional arrangements apply.
In accordance with section 269 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 all courts passing a mandatory life sentence are required to order the minimum term the prisoner must serve before the Parole Board can consider release on licence, unless the seriousness of the offence is so exceptionally high that the early release provisions should not apply – in other words, a ‘whole life order’. Sutcliffe did then make a further appeal in 2010 to the High Court who dismissed the appeal, confirming that he would serve a whole life tariff and would never be released from imprisonment.
The West Yorkshire Police were heavily 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 pre-dated the use of computers in criminal cases. Information on suspects was stored on handwritten index cards at various incident rooms across the county, making it a case of the left hand not knowing what the right was doing. Beside the logistical difficulties in storing and accessing such a mountain of paperwork, it was even more 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 tape and letters from Sunderland, 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 a computer program known as HOLMES, which stands for Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. This is now used for all major incidents and allows documents to be cross-referenced efficiently.
In addition, a judicial enquiry was ordered by the government to look into the whole Yorkshire Ripper case. Sir Lawrence Byford, HM Inspector of Constabulary, conducted this. His report was made public on 1 June 2006. 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 stated: ‘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 the police on two occasions in connection with incidents involving prostitutes. The report said that it was clear on at least one occasion that he had attacked a Bradford prostitute with a cosh. 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’.
Sir Lawrence Byford went on to state: ‘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 det
ails 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.’ Police identified a number of attacks that matched Sutcliffe’s MO and tried to question the killer, but he was never charged with other crimes. 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: ‘I have good reason to now [sic] the man you are looking for in the Ripper case. This man as [sic] dealings with prostitutes and always had a thing about them … His name and address is Peter Sutcliffe, 6 Garden Lane, Heaton, Bradford. Works [sic] for Clarke’s Transport, Shipley.’ 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. 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’ that took place after Sutcliffe’s arrest, according to the report. 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.’
Following Sutcliffe’s arrest and conviction, the search for ‘Wearside Jack’, who sent police the letters and tape, continued. On 18 October 2005, it was reported that a suspect had been arrested. A West Yorkshire Police spokesman stated: ‘Officers from West Yorkshire this afternoon travelled to the Sunderland area where they arrested a 49-year-old local man on suspicion of attempting to pervert the course of justice. This relates to the hoax letters and tape that were sent to police during the Yorkshire Ripper murder investigation. He is currently being transported to a West Yorkshire police station for interview.’ The 49-year-old man would have been aged 22 or so back in March 1978.
On 19 October 2005, further information about the investigation and the suspect was disclosed. The man arrested was John Humble of the Ford area of Sunderland. Humble was separated from his wife and lived with his brother. Police confirmed that the two-bedroom council house where he lived was being searched by police officers. It was reported that neighbours said that he had lived there for approximately five years. Apparently, a man claiming to be the nephew of the arrested man said that the voice on the tape was not the voice of his uncle, and that his uncle was born near where he currently lived and had no association with the Castletown area where it is believed the man on the tape was from.
It was reported that the reason for the arrest was that a DNA profile had been obtained from the saliva used to seal the envelopes of the letters. The envelopes had been reported as missing as far back as 1999 when a request for them, to test for DNA, was made to the West Yorkshire police during the making of the documentary Manhunt: The Search For The Yorkshire Ripper. Furthermore, in July 2005 an ongoing audit, which had been under way for the previous 12 months, had discovered that the original hoax letters and cassette tape had also gone missing. It appears that the envelopes were eventually found and tests conducted.
On 20 October 2005, John Humble appeared at Leeds Magistrates Court charged with perverting the course of justice. The charge against him was read by a clerk at the court, who stated: ‘You sent a series of communications, namely three letters and an audiotape, to West Yorkshire police and the press, claiming to be the perpetrator of a series of murders that at that time was the subject of a police investigation.’
During the four-minute hearing, John Humble confirmed his name, date of birth and place of residence. There was no plea entered by the defendant. District Judge Christopher Darnton remanded Humble in custody and no application for bail was made. It was also reported that John Humble might also face questioning by the Lancashire police in relation to Joan Harrison, whose murder was included in one of the hoax letters.
On 21 March 2006, having pleaded guilty at a previous hearing, John Humble appeared before Judge Norman Jones QC for sentencing on the four charges of perverting the course of justice in relation to the Wearside Jack hoax. The judge told Humble: ‘You arrogantly set out to send the investigation away from the path of the true killer. You did that with an indifference to the potentially fatal consequences, which was breathtaking, and this sets you in the most serious category of offending of this type. The Ripper attacked without mercy and police were baffled for five years and he remained undetected. I’m satisfied one of the factors that may well have contributed to his remaining at large for so long was you sending the letters and the tape … You took on his persona. Your letters comprised a mixture of taunts and threats and were well researched. Then you sent a tape recording of you pretending to be the Ripper. It was cleverly constructed and your delivery was sinister … Police were persuaded that the hoaxer was the killer and you must have appreciated the way the police were being led astray. At no time did you have the courage to come forward and confess.’
Judge Jones said that while it could not be said that Humble’s actions of sending the letters and tape caused or directly led to the murders of three women and the attacks on two other women who survived, it had moved the focus of the police investigation to Sunderland. In addition, it could not be said that the murderer might have been caught any earlier, but that when Peter Sutcliffe was arrested he told police the hoax letters and tape had given him ‘confidence’. ‘What can be said is there would have been a better chance of those women not being attacked had the letter and tapes not been sent and Sutcliffe himself might have been given a higher priority … You are a man with a dislike of the police and it gave you pleasure to make fools of them. What is unforgivable is that you failed to put the record straight when you realised the damage you were doing. Had that tape not been sent, the deployment to Sunderland, whether wise or not, would simply not have occurred.’ Following his address he sentenced John Humble to six years’ imprisonment for each of the three letters he sent and eight years for the infamous hoax tape, all sentences to run concurrently.
On 13 July 2006, John Humble was granted the right to appeal the length of his eight-year sentence for the Wearside Jack hoax. On 24 October 2006, Humble lost his appeal. Humble was not present for the ruling by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, who was sitting with two other judges. Delivering the ruling of the court, Mr Justice Calvert-Smith said that the case was ‘uniquely serious and had possibly fatal consequences’, and that ‘the offence called for a very severe sentence … Although the sentence was indeed severe, it cannot be said it was wrong in principle or excessive.’ It was also stated that ‘issues of personal mitigation and passage of time lose much of their influence’.
Parallels have been drawn between the Yorkshire Ripper and Jack the Ripper, despite the murders being more than 100 years apart. In the case of Sutcliffe, he targeted mainly prostitutes, rendering the majority of them unconscious before setting about killing and mutilating the bodies of some of the victims. Jack the Ripper did the same. Attempts by this author to contact Sutcliffe to pursue this theory and request an interview were unsuccessful. On two separ
ate occasions I wrote to him at Broadmoor Hospital, the high-security psychiatric facility where he has been held since March 1984, enclosing a copy of my book, Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation. Twice I received a reply from a forensic psychologist declining my request and returning the book.
On 16 July 2010 Sutcliffe made an appeal to the High Court for a specific minimum life sentence to be set in order for him to be given a chance of parole. The appeal was considered by Mr Justice Mitting.
The judge considered the key issue of ‘diminished responsibility’. The jury at the original trial in 1981 rejected the proposition that Sutcliffe’s paranoid schizophrenia diminished his responsibility for the killings.
Having considered the appeal, the judge stated that he could not override the jury’s decision, and so was not able to take that issue into account in setting Sutcliffe’s minimum term. He stated: ‘This was a campaign of murder which terrorised the population of a large part of Yorkshire for several years. The only explanation for it, on the jury’s verdict, was anger, hatred and obsession. Apart from a terrorist outrage, it is difficult to conceive of circumstances in which one man could account for so many victims.’
The High Court decided that Peter Sutcliffe would never be released from prison. Various psychological reports describing Sutcliffe’s mental state were taken into consideration, as well as the severity of his crimes. Not content to accept the court ruling, Sutcliffe’s defence team launched a further appeal, this time to the Court of Appeal. The hearing for this appeal began on 30 November 2010 and was rejected on 14 January 2011. Sutcliffe’s defence team launched a further appeal to the Supreme Court. However, the Court of Appeal rejected Sutcliffe’s application.
The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers Page 41
