by Ray Black
Things did not improve for Peter when he got to secondary school. He was severely bullied, which resulted in him playing truant from school for about two weeks, which went unnoticed until his parents were informed of his absence. Whereas a lot of children who play truant may utilise the time exploring the town centre or being mischievous, Peter had spent his weeks at home hiding in the attic reading books and comics by torchlight.
Once the school realised Peter was playing truant, they decided to take immediate action. Although the bullying did stop, it didn’t mean that school became any easier for him. Somehow he was always seen as different and set apart from the rest of the students.
Peter started to feel the need to ‘fit in’ in the last couple of years of Secondary school. He took up weight training and much to his father’s delight was soon able to easily beat his other brothers at arm wrestling. The change in Peter did not stop there, he started to participate in sports, but due to the fact he was only doing it to fit in, he never really excelled in anything.
Sutcliffe finally left school at the age of fifteen with no goals or idea of what he wanted to do with his life. For the next couple of years he flitted from job to job, never sticking things out for more than a few months, and finally he took a job as a gravedigger at Bingley Cementery.
It is quite common for teenagers to not really know what career path they want to take, and it is certainly not unusual to try out a number of jobs before finding something that you are good at or really enjoy. On the other hand, a common characteristic of a serial killer, is the inability to hold down a job. But who can say whether this part of Sutcliffe’s life was to lay the path for his evil future or whether he was just having the normal teenage problem of not really knowing what he wanted to do tomorrow let alone in a few years time?
Peter absolutely adored his mother and would do anything for her, and spent a lot of time with her whilst he was a teenager. But his relationship with his father was totally different, they were so different that there did not seem to be a common bond. Peter’s father was slightly happier when he took up weight training but that did not make Peter have any more time for his father. Peter believed that his father spent too much time with his friends – drinking and socialising. By the age of eighteen, Peter Sutcliffe had still not shown any interest in girls and relationships, something which was a concern to his father.
When Peter was twenty he finally approached a Czechoslovakian girl called Sonia Szurma. At first, her parents were not happy with her choice of man, but through time they grew to love Peter whom they believed to be a charming, hard working man who treated their daughter well.
In 1968, Peter was distraught to find out that his mother was having an affair with a police officer. He told his father that he understood what he was going through as Sonia had had an affair a couple of years after they had started dating.
Did this situation of the only two women in his life have a knock-on effect to what was to happen a few years later? Would something like this take all Peter’s respect for women away? Did Peter now think that all women were the same and did not deserve to be treated with any respect? Did this make Peter’s brain rationalise, in some twisted way, the murders he was about to commit?
THE KILLING STARTS
After eight years of dating, Sutcliffe married Sonia and for a long time managed to keep his public appearance as a shy, quiet gentleman. There were no outward signs of violence, and any such evil feelings were well hidden within his soul.
However, one person that had seen another slightly worrying side of Peter, was Gary Jackson, a work colleague at the cemetery. He recounted that Peter and Sonia had lived with her mother and father for three years before finally moving into a place of their own in Heaton, Bradford in 1977. But by this point Peter Sutcliffe was definitely not the man that his in-laws had grown to love and respect. Two years earlier, on October 30, 1975, Peter Sutcliffe had committed his first murder. Actually it was in the summer of this same year that his spree had actually started. Anna Rogulskyj had been attacked on July 5, 1975, but had managed to escape with only minor wounds. A month later there was another attack on Olive Smelt, but again she had a very lucky escape.
Wilma McCann, a twenty-eight-year-old prostitute from the rundown, Chapeltown district of Leeds, had not been so lucky. She had gone out on the town drinking in various pubs and clubs and by the early hours of October 30 was touting for business near her Chapeltown home.
Wilma was soon picked up by a man in a lime green Ford Capri who took her to the nearby Price Phillip playing fields and suggested that they had sex on the grass. This man was Peter Sutcliffe. As Wilma started taking her trousers off, Sutcliffe was reaching for a hammer and began battering Wilma over the head. Wilma’s body was discovered later that morning by a milkman and was found to have stab wounds all over her body. The pathologist reported that the stab wounds were inflicted after she had been battered to death, either as a way of making sure she was dead, or as a ritualistic final stage of a sadist.
On January 20, 1976, Emily Jackson went to the Gaiety public house in Roundhay Road in Leeds, accompanied by her husband. It was a notorious meeting place for prostitutes and their clients. While her husband took a seat in the public house and waited for her, Emily climbed into the front seat of a Land Rover that had been waiting in the car park. Mr Jackson waited for quite some considerable time, but assuming that Emily was gone for the night, gave up and took a taxi home. However, the next morning her body was discovered by a workman. Her clothing had been removed and there were repeated stab wounds on her chest. Her head had been bashed with a hammer and overall there were at least fifty stab wounds to her neck, stomach and chest. Added to this her back had been gouged with a Philips screwdriver.
It was from this murder that the police managed to obtain their first piece of positive evidence. The killer had left the impression of his size seven wellington boot stamped onto the right thigh of Emily Jackson’s body. The modus operandi was so similar, that the police linked this killing with that of Wilma McCann.
In October 1976, Peter Sutcliffe came home to his wife with the good news that he had finally found work as a lorry driver with T. & W. H. Clark (Holdings Ltd) on the Canal Road Industrial Estate, between Shipley and Bradford.
It was five months before Sutcliffe would claim his next victim. On February 5, 1977, twenty-eight-year-old Irene Richardson left her rooming house at around 11.30 p.m. to go to a disco at Tiffany’s Club. She was certainly down on her luck for her two daughters had been put into foster care and due to lack of money she had taken to walking the streets of Chapeltown to look for customers. On this night she had been walking to the disco but had never actually showed up at the club. Her body was discovered the next morning by a jogger near a sports pavilion. She was found lying face down with her coat covering her bloodied body. She had a fractured skull where her head had been hit with a hammer three times, her clothes had been removed, and once again she had multiple stab wounds. The attack was so frenzied that it had caused her intestines to spill out.
The police were now aware that they had a serial killer stalking the streets, something that had not been seen for a long time. The press issued details of the killings and gave the serial killer a name – ‘The Yorkshire Ripper’. There had new evidence at the scene of his last victim – tyre tracks. With the assistance of local tyre manufacturers they managed to break it down to a possible twenty-six models of car. However, without the modern assistance of computers they had to rely on the records at the local vehicle taxation offices. The vehicles that were compatible with the tracks found at the scene was over 100,000 cars! Not much of a lead.
The next killing came on April 23, 1977. Patricia Atkinson lived alone in a small house in Bradford and had gone down to her local pub to have a drink with a few friends. She operated as a prostitute from her small flat and felt safe inside from the threat of the Ripper who always seemed to kill his women outside. Patricia was seen walking home at around
11.00 p.m. and it was soon after this that Peter Sutcliffe met the now drunk Tina. They walked together to his car and then drove back to her flat. As they went through her front door Sutcliffe struck the back of her head with a hammer, the same one that he had used on all his other victims. He then dragged her bleeding body to the bedroom where he proceeded to remove her clothes and further mutilate her.
Patricia’s body was discovered the next day when some friends called round and, on finding the front door ajar, went inside and were horrified by what they found. The police were in no doubt that it was the Yorkshire Ripper as he had left the print of a size seven wellington boot on one of the bed sheets – the same print as the one left at the crime scene of Emily Jackson.
Peter’s activities as the notorious Yorkshire Ripper continued to escalate. On June 25, 1977, he went down to a pub to have a drink with some friends and around 2.00 a.m. he left for home. Sixteen-year-old Jayne MacDonald was also out on that Saturday night. She had been to a dance and had gone to buy some chips with some friend in the city centre. Busy chatting with her friends she missed the last bus home and so it was around 11.50 p.m. that she began walking home with a young boy named Mark Jones. It was around 1.30 p.m. when they parted company. Jayne stopped to call a taxi but could not get an answer and so continued walking. She had not seen the figure lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce on her.
Jayne MacDonald’s body was discovered by some children at around 9.50 a.m. lying by a wall in a playground. Everything about this attack was a replica of the others, with the exception that Jayne was not a prostitute.
Newspaper reports the following day stated that an ‘innocent young woman had been slaughtered’, sadly reflecting the attitude that prostitutes deserved what they got. Where witnesses were previously reluctant to admit any association with the murdered prostitutes, now people came from the surrounding area quite willing to volunteer information in an attempt to catch the killer.
The police were now getting desperate in their attempts to apprehend the murderer. Maureen Long, who had survived an earlier attack by the Ripper, described his appearance as around 6 foot tall, 30–40 years of age with long hair. Only a few women actually survived the attacks of the Ripper and each time they gave a different description of their attacker, so the police were no nearer to catching their man. Meanwhile Peter Sutcliffe was able to continue to hide behind his disguise of respectability and continued his rampage of destruction.
THE FIVE-POUND NOTE
On October 1, 1977, a prostitute named Jean Jordan, accepted an advance of £5 and climbed into Peter Sutcliffe’s car. He drove to some allotments near the Southern Cemetery in Manchester and as they climbed out of his car, Sutcliffe hit her eleven times with his hammer. He dragged her body into the protection of some bushes but just as he was about to continue his attack he heard the sound of a car approaching and fled the scene. One thing that played on his mind as he drove away, was the £5 he had given the girl, as he felt sure that the police would be able to trace it back to where he worked. It was a brand new note that he had received in his pay packet at T. & W. H. Clark. He waited for eight days and as there had been no news that a body had been found, Sutcliffe decided to risk it and return to the body to retrieve the £5 note. However, when he arrived at the allotment he searched and searched but was unable to find the victim’s handbag. Frustrated and angry Sutcliffe then proceeded to attack the body with a piece of broken glass in an attempt to hide his signature hammer blows.
The body was discovered the very next day by a passer-by but the body could not be identified at first because the head was mutilated beyond recognition. Her identity was later discovered by fingerprinting – she was Jean Jordan. She had not been reported as a missing person because apparently her husband thought nothing of her disappearance. The police thoroughly searched the scene of the crime and found the missing handbag. On further inspection they discovered a secret pocket which contained the new £5 note. The serial number, which was AW51 121565, was tracked through the bank to thirty possible companies, one of which was T. & W. H. Clark where Peter Sutcliffe worked. The police now had a list of 5,494 people who could possibly have received the note and one of these was Peter. He was questioned one month after Jordan’s death in routine questioning, but the police felt he had a genuine alibi.
STATE OF PANIC
By now prostitutes were in a state of panic and they devised systems to protect themselves from the Ripper. Eighteen-year-old Helen Rytka and her twin sister Rita wrote down the number plate of every car that either sister got into and then arranged to meet at a designated place within exactly fifteen minutes. However, on January 31, 1978, Helen arrived at the meeting place five minutes early, when Peter Sutcliffe showed up. Probably thinking that the chances of the man being the Ripper were one in a million, she climbed into his car and then drove to a timber yard close to a railway line. Initially Sutcliffe’s plan was foiled as he spotted two men working at the timber yard and so he ended up having sex with the girl. When the two men had gone and Helen moved from the back of the car into the front, Sutcliffe struck once again with his hammer. He then mutilated the body and hid it under a pile of wood.
Rita phoned the police reluctantly to report that her sister was missing, scared that she might be arrested herself for soliciting. Using sniffer dogs the police tracked down the body but found no other clues at the scene to help them get any nearer to the arrest of the Ripper.
On March 26, 1978, a body was spotted in the red light district of Bradford. It was partially hidden under an old abandoned sofa, and apparently had been killed ten days before Helen Rytka. This time the victim was Yvonne Pearson. Apparently, as with Jean Jordan, the killer had returned to the body to make it more visible. The killer had also left another clue to the date by leaving a newspaper under her arm, and the police were in no doubt that this was the work of the Yorkshire Ripper.
The ninth Ripper victim was forty-one-year-old Vera Millward. Her body was discovered by a gardener on the morning of May 17, 1978, on a rubbish pile close to a car park.a hoax?
In March 1978 the police received two anonymous letters claiming to be from Jack the Ripper who was threatening more deaths and taunting the police. Both letters were considered to be a bad joke as the contents were both false and miscalculated. On the 23 March a third letter was sent to George Oldfield, who was head of the investigation. This time the writer of the letter made some reference to a medical detail in the Vera Millward murder which made the police take it much more seriously. Forensic scientists took saliva tests from the envelope and this time they achieved a positive result. These tests revealed a rare blood group B, the same as that of Joan Harrison’s killer. They also confirmed that all three letters came from the same source. The writer predicted that the next victim was going to be ‘an old slut’ who came from the Bradford or Liverpool district.
It had been almost a year since the Ripper had claimed his last victim, and the police were now convinced that like that of ‘Jack the Ripper’ this case would remain unsolved. Possibly he had moved on, had died, or more unlikely that he had ‘retired’. However, these claims were soon shattered when he claimed his tenth victim.
This time the unfortunate girl was nineteen-year-old Josephine Whitaker. It was April 4, 1979, a little before midnight, when Josephine was crossing Saville Park in Halifax. Sutcliffe was cruising around in his Ford car looking for a suitable victim, when he spotted her. Her body was found the next day with all the usual signature marks but, again, Josephine was not a prostitute. It now became obvious to the police that this maniac would appear to attack any women who were on the streets at night.
Two months after the murder of Josephine Whitaker an envelope containing a cassette tape arrived at the office of George Oldfield. The handwriting on the envelope appeared to be the same as that of the letters and when the tape was played the voice had a Geordie accent. The message was:
I’m Jack. I see you’re still having no luck catching m
e . . . I reckon your boys are letting you down George. You can’t be much good can ya? . . . I warned you in March that I would strike again, sorry it wasn’t Bradford . . . I’m not sure when I will strike again, but it will definitely be some time this year, maybe September or October, even sooner if I can get the chance. I’m not sure where, maybe Manchester. I like it there. There’s plenty of them knocking about. They never do learn do they George? . . . Well it’s been nice talking to you. Yours Jack the Ripper.
Two days later George Oldfield presented the tape at a press conference still uncertain whether or not the tape, along with the letters, was a hoax or not. George was now so determined to catch the Ripper that he set up a publicity campaign and roadside information points with a phone line where you could listen to the Geordie voice. Unfortunately the police relied so much on the ‘Geordie Ripper’ that once again Sutcliffe was eliminated from being the suspect.
The response by the public was enormous and the police received around 50,000 calls. By the end of only the second day they had received 1,000 calls and every lead had to be followed up. A voice expert from Leeds University announced that the voice on the tape came from a village in Castletown and a team of police officers were moved to the village to carry out interviews at every single home. But still their efforts were to no avail.
The strain had taken its toll on George Oldfield, who suffered three heart attacks and had to be hospitalised. He did not return to the investigation until the beginning of 1980.
