MacDonald’s murder was described by police and press as a “tragic mistake” because the previous victims had all been prostitutes, and therefore, in the eyes of many, were complicit in their own deaths. Complacent officers overlooked vital clues, and inadequate technology was used to collate the thousands of interviews and intelligence.Īmid all this, Sutcliffe just kept killing, with hammers, screwdrivers and knives, and police were no further forward by the time the body of his fifth victim, 16-year-old Jayne MacDonald, was discovered in June 1977. Yet from the beginning, the West Yorkshire police were guilty of dragging their feet and bungling the investigation. It was very similar to the previous attempted murder, but the police didn’t link these attacks or murders until June 1978 following the murder of Helen Rytka, Sutcliffe’s eighth victim who was murdered in January 1978 in Huddersfield.ĭuring the 1970s and into 1980, Sutcliffe killed 13 women and left seven more for dead. He also slashed her back with a knife and tore her clothing. One month later, Sutcliffe attacked Olive Smelt with a hammer in Halifax, inflicting grievous head injuries. He attacked her with a hammer and caused extremely serious head injuries, as well as slashing her body with a knife. In July 1975, Sutcliffe, who was later exposed as the Yorkshire Ripper, attempted to murder Anna Rogulskyj in Keighley, close to Bradford. His head covered with a blanket, Peter Sutcliffe is escorted into Dewsbury Magistrates Court to be charged with murder on Janu But police decided he was merely about to commit a robbery, not a violent attack. He later bragged to his friend Trevor Birdsall about the assault, yet Birdsall chose not to report this until many years later when he eventually admitted he had long suspected his friend of being the “Yorkshire Ripper” serial killer.Ī few months after that attack, Sutcliffe was found in the red-light area in Bradford in possession of a hammer. Sutcliffe had attacked one prostituted woman in Bradford with a large stone inside a sock. Police recorded two incidents that year, both of which were merely recorded in the officers’ pocketbooks and taken no further. Sutcliffe, who, according to his friends, acquired a fascination with prostituted women in his teens, subsequently developed a desire to inflict injury upon them. In 1969, an unremarkable 23-year-old man named Peter Sutcliffe first came to the attention of the police in northern England. Prosecutor Sir Michael Havers during Sutcliffe’s murder trial, May 1981 The last six attacks were on totally respectable women.” While some of the victims were prostitutes “perhaps the saddest part of this case is that some were not. Peter Sutcliffe in his statement to police, January 1981 “When I saw in the papers that MacDonald was so young and not a prostitute, I felt like someone inhuman and I realised that it was a devil driving me against my will and that I was a beast.”
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