Peter Sutcliffe Biography
Peter Sutcliffe born Peter William Coonan is an English serial killer who was dubbed the “Yorkshire Ripper” by the press. In 1981 Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven others.
Sutcliffe had allegedly regularly used the services of prostitutes in Leeds and Bradford. When interviewed by authorities, he claimed that the voice of God had sent him on a mission to kill prostitutes. Sutcliffe carried out murders over five years, during which time some members of the public were especially shocked by the murders of women who were not prostitutes. After his arrest for driving with false number plates in January 1981, the police questioned him about the killings and he confessed to being the perpetrator.
At his trial in 1981, Sutcliffe pleaded not guilty to murder on grounds of diminished responsibility after a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia but his defence was rejected by a majority of the jury. He is serving 20 concurrent sentences of life imprisonment. Following his conviction, Sutcliffe began using his mother’s maiden name and became known as Peter William Coonan.
West Yorkshire Police were criticised for the time taken in apprehending Sutcliffe despite interviewing him nine times in the course of their investigation. Because of the sensational nature of the case, the police handled an exceptional amount of information, some of it misleading (including a hoax recorded message and letters purporting to be from the “Ripper”). The 1982 Byford Report of the official inquiry (made public in 2006) confirmed the validity of the criticism.
The High Court dismissed an appeal by Sutcliffe in 2010, confirming that he would serve a whole life order and never be released from custody. He was transferred from prison to a high-security psychiatric hospital in March 1984. In August 2016 it was ruled that Sutcliffe was mentally fit to be returned to prison, and he was transferred that month to HM Prison Frankland in Durham.
Peter Sutcliffe Age
Peter Sutcliffe Height
He stands at a height of 5 foot 8 inches (1.72m)
Peter Sutcliffe Image
Peter Sutcliffe Image
Peter Sutcliffe Wife
Sutcliffe met Sonia Szurma on 14 February 1967; they married on 10 August 1974. She suffered several miscarriages and they were informed that she would not be able to have children. She resumed a teacher training course, during which time she had an affair with an ice-cream van driver. When she completed the course in 1977 and began teaching, she and Sutcliffe used her salary to buy a house in Heaton, Bradford, which they moved into on 26 September 1977, and where they lived at the time of Sutcliffe’s arrest.
Peter Sutcliffe Parents
Born to John William Sutcliffe and his wife Kathleen Frances.
Peter Sutcliffe Brother
Peter Sutcliffe Early Life
He was born in Bingley in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Born to John William Sutcliffe and his wife Kathleen Frances. Reportedly a loner, he left school aged fifteen and had a series of menial jobs, including two stints as a gravedigger in the 1960s. Between November 1971 and April 1973, Sutcliffe worked at the Baird Television factory on a packaging line. He left this position when he was asked to go on the road as a salesman.
After leaving Baird Television, Sutcliffe worked nightshifts at the Britannia Works of Anderton International from April 1973. In February 1975, he took redundancy and used half of the £400 pay-off to train as a heavy goods vehicle driver. On 5 March 1976, he was dismissed for the theft of used tyres. He was unemployed until October 1976, when he found a job as an HGV driver for T.& W.H. Clark (Holdings) Ltd. on the Canal Road Industrial Estate in Bradford.
Sutcliffe, by some reports, used prostitutes as a young man, and it has been speculated that he had a bad experience during which he was conned out of money.Other analyses of his actions have not found evidence that he actually sought their services although he clearly expressed unusual behaviour before the killings.
Sutcliffe met Sonia Szurma on 14 February 1967; they married on 10 August 1974. She suffered several miscarriages and they were informed that she would not be able to have children. She resumed a teacher training course, during which time she had an affair with an ice-cream van driver. When she completed the course in 1977 and began teaching, she and Sutcliffe used her salary to buy a house in Heaton, Bradford, which they moved into on 26 September 1977, and where they lived at the time of Sutcliffe’s arrest.
Through his childhood and his early adolescence, Sutcliffe showed no signs of abnormality. Later, in part related to his occupation as a gravedigger, he developed an unhealthy, macabre sense of humour. In his late adolescence, he developed a growing obsession with voyeurism and spent much time spying on prostitutes and the men seeking their services.
Peter Sutcliffe Distributing Facts about Him
He Said He Was Cleaning Up The Streets
Years after Peter Sutcliffe was apprehended and confessed to his crimes, he told his brother the reason he had attacked and murdered women and girls was because he was “cleaning up the streets.” Many of the people Sutcliffe assaulted and killed had been involved in prostitution, and he felt as though he was doing some sort of public service by viciously beating and stabbing sex workers.
However, not all of the girls and women who were subjected to Sutcliffe’s extreme violence were involved in prostitution, with some of the Yorkshire Ripper’s victims being students, a shop worker, and a bank clerk. Because he didn’t exclusively kill sex workers, it appears as though Sutcliffe attacked victims of opportunity, many of whom just happened to be involved in prostitution.
Another Man Claimed Responsibility For The Killings
Peter Sutcliffe was able to get away with killing women and girls for five years for a number of different reasons, including the actions of a deranged man who contacted police, claiming to be the person responsible for the murders. In March 1978, when Yorkshire officials and residents were desperate to find the man who had taken the lives of several local girls and women, a man sent the first of three letters purporting to be the sought-after serial killer.
From March 1978 to March 1979, the man, who was eventually dubbed “Wearside Jack,” sent two written communications to the authorities and another to a newspaper, as well as an audio tape, convincing the police he was the person who had committed the killings. Using information gleaned from the letters and the tape, officers focused on tracking down a man with a Wearside accent, causing them to eliminate any suspects who didn’t speak in the manner of people from Sunderland, a city in Northeast England.
His Father Exposed His Mother’s Infidelity To The Entire Family
One of the contributing factors to Peter Sutcliffe’s hatred towards women may have been his shock at discovering his beloved mother, Katherine, had been unfaithful to his father, John. When Sutcliffe’s father learned his wife had been cheating on him, instead of confronting Katherine privately about her infidelity, he decided to humiliate and embarrass her in front of their children.
When John discovered his wife planned to meet her lover at a local hotel, Sutcliffe’s father invited his children, including Peter and his girlfriend, to wait with him in the room Katherine and her loved had booked. When Katherine opened the door to the room, she was shocked to find her husband and family, not her lover, waiting for her. John called her a prostitute and forced Katherine to open up her purse, revealing the lingerie she had packed for the romantic evening.
The ordeal had a devastating effect on the family, including Peter Sutcliffe, who was horrified his mother, whom he had always held in high esteem, had been having an extra-marital affair.
His Wife Had Schizophrenia
In 1967, 21-year-old Peter Sutcliffe met 16-year-old Sonia Szurma at a Yorkshire pub, and they quickly became a couple. While Sutcliffe worked various jobs, including as a truck driver and a grave digger, Szurma, the daughter of Czech immigrants, studied to become a teacher. However, while attending school in London in the early 1970s, Szurma experienced delusions and behaved erratically, leading doctors to diagnose her with schizophrenia.
Szurma had difficulty coping with her mental health issues, and she repeatedly withdrew from school, overwhelmed by the pressures of her classes and the sometimes debilitating symptoms of her schizophrenia. However, Sutcliffe remained committed to his relationship with Szurma, and the couple married in 1974. While they both desperately wanted to have children, all of Szurma’s pregnancies ended with miscarriages, preventing them from ever having a child together.
His Best Friend Turned Him Into Police
In November 1980, Trevor Birdsall sent an anonymous letter to the West Yorkshire Police, telling law enforcement that he suspected his close friend Peter Sutcliffe was the man responsible for the attacks and murders attributed to the Yorkshire Ripper. In the note, he told investigators about Sutcliffe’s negative feelings towards sex workers, and he provided details about an attack that had occurred five years earlier. Birdsall also included Sutcliffe’s name, occupation, and address, giving officers plenty of information to help them follow up on the anonymous tip.
Not content just to send the letter, Birdsall, at the urging of his girlfriend, went to Bradford Police headquarters and told an officer about the note he’d mailed and also provided additional details about Sutcliffe. While the constable wrote down the information Birdsall gave about his friend, no one ever followed up on the tips, allowing Sutcliffe to remain free.
Peter Sutcliffe Attacks and murders
1969
Sutcliffe assaulted a prostitute he had met while searching for a woman who had tricked him out of money. He left his friend Trevor Birdsall’s minivan and walked up St Paul’s Road in Bradford until he was out of sight. When he returned, he was out of breath, as if he had been running. He told Birdsall to drive off quickly. Sutcliffe said he had followed a prostitute into a garage and hit her over the head with a stone in a sock. According to his statement, Sutcliffe said, “I got out of the car, went across the road and hit her. The force of the impact tore the toe off the sock and whatever was in it came out. I went back to the car and got in it”.
Police visited his home the next day, as the woman he had attacked had noted Birdsall’s vehicle registration plate. Sutcliffe admitted he had hit her, but claimed it was with his hand. The police told him he was “very lucky” as the woman did not want anything more to do with the incident – she was a known prostitute, and her husband was serving a jail term for assault
1975
Sutcliffe committed his second assault on the night of 5 July 1975 in Keighley. He attacked Anna Rogulskyj, who was walking alone, striking her unconscious with a ball-peen hammer and slashing her stomach with a knife. Disturbed by a neighbour, he left without killing her. Rogulskyj survived after extensive medical intervention but was psychologically traumatised by the attack.
Sutcliffe attacked Olive Smelt in Halifax in August. Employing the same modus operandi, he struck her from behind and used a knife to slash her, this time above her buttocks. Again he was interrupted, and left his victim badly injured but alive. Like Rogulskyj, Smelt suffered from emotional and mental health problems, including clinical depression. On 27 August, Sutcliffe attacked 14-year-old Tracy Browne in Silsden. He struck her from behind and hit her on the head five times while she was walking along a country lane. He ran off when he saw the lights of a passing car, leaving his victim requiring brain surgery. Sutcliffe was not convicted of the attack, but confessed to it in 1992.
The first victim to lose her life in a Sutcliffe attack was Wilma McCann on 30 October. McCann, from Scott Hall in Leeds, was a mother of four. Sutcliffe struck her twice with a hammer before stabbing her 15 times in the neck, chest and abdomen. An extensive inquiry, involving 150 police officers and 11,000 interviews, failed to find the culprit. One of McCann’s daughters died by suicide in December 2007, reportedly after suffering years of depression over her mother’s death.
1976
Sutcliffe committed his next murder in Leeds in January 1976, when he stabbed 42-year-old Emily Jackson 52 times. In dire financial straits, Jackson had been using the family van to exchange sexual favors for money. Sutcliffe picked up Jackson who was soliciting outside the Gaiety pub on Roundhay Road, he then drove about half a mile to some derelict buildings on Enfield Terrace in the Manor Industrial Estate. Sutcliffe hit her on the head with a hammer, and then dragged her body into rubbish strewn yard and used a sharpened screwdriver to stab her in the neck, chest, and abdomen. Sutcliffe stamped on her thigh, leaving behind an impression of his boot.
Sutcliffe attacked 20-year-old Marcella Claxton in Roundhay Park, Leeds, on 9 May. Walking home from a party, she accepted an offer of a lift from Sutcliffe. When she got out of the car to urinate, Sutcliffe hit her from behind with a hammer. She was left alive and testified against Sutcliffe at his trial. At the time of this attack, Claxton had been four months pregnant and subsequently suffered a miscarriage.
1977
On 5 February Sutcliffe attacked Irene Richardson, a Chapeltown prostitute, in Roundhay Park. Richardson was bludgeoned 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 a long list of possible suspect vehicles.
Two months later, on 23 April, Sutcliffe killed Patricia “Tina” Atkinson, a prostitute from Bradford, in her flat, where police found a bootprint on the bedclothes. Two months later on 26 June, he murdered 16-year-old Jayne MacDonald in Chapeltown. She was not a prostitute and, in the public perception, showed that all women were potential victims. Sutcliffe seriously assaulted Maureen Long in Bradford in July. He was interrupted and left her for dead. A witness misidentified the make of his car. More than 300 police officers collected 12,500 statements and checked thousands of cars, without success. On 1 October 1977 Sutcliffe murdered Jean Jordan, a prostitute from Manchester. In a confession, Sutcliffe said he had realised the new £5 note he had given her was traceable. After hosting a family party at his new home, he returned to the wasteland behind Manchester’s Southern Cemetery, where he had left the body, to retrieve the note. Unable to find it, he mutilated Jordan’s corpse and moved it.
On 9 October, Jordan’s body was discovered by local dairy worker and future actor Bruce Jones, who had an allotment on land adjoining the site where the body was found and was searching for house bricks when he made the discovery. The £5 note, hidden in a secret compartment in Jordan’s handbag, was traced to branches of the Midland Bank in Shipley and Bingley. Police analysis of bank operations allowed them to narrow their field of inquiry to 8,000 employees who could have received it in their wage packet. Over three months the police interviewed 5,000 men, including Sutcliffe. The police found that the alibi given for Sutcliffe’s whereabouts was credible; he had indeed spent much of the evening of the killing at a family party. Weeks of intense investigations pertaining to the origins of the £5 note led to nothing, leaving police officers frustrated that they collected an important clue, but had been unable to trace the actual firm (or employee within the firm) to which the note had been issued.
On 14 December, Sutcliffe attacked Marilyn Moore, another prostitute from Leeds. She survived and provided police with a description of her attacker. Tyre tracks found at the scene matched those from an earlier attack.
1978
The police discontinued the search for the person who received the £5 note in January 1978. Although Sutcliffe was interviewed about it, he was not investigated further (he was contacted and disregarded by the Ripper Squad on several further occasions). That month, Sutcliffe killed again. His victim was Yvonne Pearson, a 21-year-old prostitute from Bradford. He repeatedly bludgeoned her about the head with a ball-pein hammer then jumped on her chest before stuffing horse-hair into her mouth from a discarded sofa under which he hid her body near Lumb Lane. Her body was not found until 26 March.
Ten days later, he killed Helen Rytka, an 18-year-old prostitute from Huddersfield. He struck Rytka on the head five times as she exited his vehicle, before stripping many of her clothes from her body (although her bra and polo-neck jumper were positioned above her breasts), before repeatedly stabbing her in the chest. Her body was found beneath railway arches in the timber-yard to which he had driven her three days later.
On 16 May, Sutcliffe killed Vera Millward in an attack in the car park of Manchester Royal Infirmary.
1979
On 4 April 1979, Sutcliffe killed Josephine Whitaker, a 19-year-old building society clerk whom he attacked on Savile Park Moor in Halifax as she was walking home. Despite forensic evidence, police efforts were diverted for several months following receipt of a taped message purporting to be from the murderer taunting Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield, who was leading the investigation. The tape contained a man’s voice saying “I’m Jack. I see you’re having no luck catching me. I have the greatest respect for you, George, but Lord, you’re no nearer catching me now than four years ago when I started.”
Based on the recorded message, police began searching for a man with a Wearside accent, which linguists narrowed down to the Castletown area of Sunderland. The hoaxer, dubbed “Wearside Jack”, sent two letters to police and The Daily Mirror in March 1978 boasting of his crimes. The letters, signed “Jack the Ripper”, claimed responsibility for the murder of 26-year-old Joan Harrison in Preston in November 1975. At the time, police mistakenly believed that the Preston murder was not public knowledge. (The hoaxer case was re-opened in 2005, and DNA taken from envelopes was entered into the national database. On 20 October 2005, John Samuel Humble, an unemployed alcoholic and long-time resident of the Ford Estate in Sunderland – a few miles from Castletown – was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice for sending the hoax letters and tape. Humble, whose DNA had been taken following a drunk and disorderly offence in 2001, was remanded in custody and on 21 March 2006 was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison.)
On 1 September, Sutcliffe murdered 20-year-old Barbara Leach, a Bradford University student. Her body was dumped at the rear of 13 Ashgrove under a pile of bricks, close to the university and her lodgings. It was his 16th attack. The murder of a woman who was not a prostitute again alarmed the public and prompted an expensive publicity campaign emphasising the Wearside connection. Despite the false lead, Sutcliffe was interviewed on at least two other occasions in 1979. Despite matching several forensic clues and being on the list of 300 names in connection with the £5 note, he was not strongly suspected. Sutcliffe was interviewed by police nine times.
1980
In April 1980 Sutcliffe was arrested for drunk driving. While awaiting trial, he killed two more women. He murdered 47-year-old Marguerite Walls on the night of 20 August, and 20-year-old Jacqueline Hill, a student at Leeds University, on the night of 17 November. Hill’s body was found in the grounds of the Lupton Residences. He attacked three other women who survived; Dr Uphadya Bandara in Leeds on 24 September, Maureen Lea (known as Mo), an art student attacked in the grounds of Leeds University on 25 October and 16-year-old Theresa Sykes, attacked in Huddersfield on the night of 5 November. On 25 November Trevor Birdsall, an associate of Sutcliffe, reported him to the police as a suspect but the information vanished into the paperwork already accumulated.
Peter Sutcliffe Book
Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper: Michael Bilton: 9780007450732: Amazon.com: Books.
Peter Sutcliffe Today
Sutcliffe is currently serving 20 concurrent life sentences, and therefore will never be released from jail.
The 71-year-old was jailed in 1981, after police caught Sutcliffe with a 24-year-old prostitute called Olivia Reivers on January 2.
Sutcliffe was arrested when police realized his car had false number plates, and officers soon noticed that he shared many physical characteristics with the Yorkshire Ripper.
The following day police returned to the scene of Sutcliffe’s arrest – where they found a knife, hammer and rope which the killer had dumped the previous day.
After two days of intensive questioning, Sutcliffe finally admitted he was the Yorkshire Ripper.
His wife, Sonia Szurma, was also brought in for questioning by police.
Sutcliffe had previously been questioned over the murders nine times, and West Yorkshire Police was heavily criticized for its handling of the case.
In 2010, the High Court dismissed an appeal by Sutcliffe – and confirmed that he will never be released from custody.
Since August 24, 2016, he has been held in HM Prison Frankland, in Durham.
It emerged on October 2, 2018, that Sutcliffe has been in agony since returning from hospital and fears he may have testicular cancer.
Peter Sutcliffe Arrest and Trial
On 2 January 1981, Sutcliffe was stopped by the police with 24-year-old prostitute Olivia Reivers in the driveway of Light Trades House in Melbourne Avenue, Broomhill, Sheffield. A police check by probationary constable Robert Hydes revealed his car had false number plates and Sutcliffe was arrested and transferred to Dewsbury Police Station. At Dewsbury he was questioned in relation to the Yorkshire Ripper case as he matched many of the known physical characteristics. The next day police returned to the scene of the arrest and discovered a knife, hammer and rope he had discarded when he briefly slipped away from the police after telling them he was “bursting for a pee”. Sutcliffe hid a second knife in the toilet cistern at the police station when he was permitted to use the toilet. The police obtained a search warrant for his home at 6 Garden Lane in Heaton, Bradford and brought his wife in for questioning.
When Sutcliffe was stripped at the police station he was wearing an inverted V-neck sweater under his trousers. The sleeves had been pulled over his legs and the V-neck exposed his genital area. The front of the elbows were padded to protect his knees as, presumably, he knelt over his victims’ corpses. The sexual implications of this outfit were considered obvious, but it was not made public until the 2003 book, Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, by Michael Bilton was published. After two days of intensive questioning, on the afternoon of 4 January 1981 Sutcliffe suddenly declared he was the Ripper. Over the next day, Sutcliffe calmly described his many attacks. Weeks later he claimed God had told him to murder the women. He displayed emotion only when telling of the killing of his youngest victim, Jayne MacDonald, and when questioned about the murder of Joan Harrison, which he vehemently denied committing. Harrison’s murder had been linked to the Ripper killings by the “Wearside Jack” claim, and in 2011, DNA evidence proved it had been committed by convicted sex offender Christopher Smith, who had died in 2008.
Sutcliffe was charged at Dewsbury on 5 January. At his trial, he pleaded not guilty to 13 charges of murder, but guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The basis of his defence was he claimed to be the tool of God’s will. Sutcliffe claimed to have heard voices that ordered him to kill prostitutes while working as a gravedigger. He said the voices originated from the headstone of a Polish man, Bronisław Zapolski, and that the voices were that of God.
He pleaded guilty to seven charges of attempted murder. The prosecution intended to accept Sutcliffe’s plea after four psychiatrists diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia but the trial judge, Mr Justice Boreham, demanded an unusually detailed explanation of the prosecution reasoning. After a two-hour representation by the Attorney-General Sir Michael Havers, a 90-minute lunch break and another 40 minutes of legal discussion, the judge rejected the diminished responsibility plea and the expert testimonies of the psychiatrists, insisting that the case should be dealt with by a jury. The trial proper was set to commence on 5 May 1981.
The trial lasted two weeks and despite the efforts of his counsel James Chadwin QC, Sutcliffe was found guilty of murder on all counts and was sentenced to 20 concurrent sentences of life imprisonment. The trial judge said Sutcliffe was beyond redemption, and hoped he would never leave prison. He recommended a minimum term of 30 years to be served before parole could be considered meaning Sutcliffe would have been unlikely to be freed until at least 2011. On 16 July 2010, the High Court issued Sutcliffe with a whole life tariff, meaning he is unlikely ever to be released. The whole life tariff was introduced by the government in 1983, and over the next 20 years it was reported that Sutcliffe was among the small group of prisoners to have been issued with a whole life tariff. Politicians were stripped of their powers to set minimum terms for life sentence prisoners in November 2002, and the final say on how long a life sentence prisoner can serve has since rested with the High Court.
After his trial, Sutcliffe admitted two other attacks. It was decided that prosecution for these offences was “not in the public interest”. West Yorkshire Police made it clear that the victims wished to remain anonymous.
Peter Sutcliffe Released
He will never be released
Peter Sutcliffe Died
He is still alive in prison
Peter Sutcliffe Documentary
Peter Sutcliffe News
Peter Sutcliffe: who was the Yorkshire Ripper’s victims and is the killer still in prison now?
Updated: March 26th, 2019
The murder of 13 women in the 1970s is being re-examined in a new BBC documentary
In 1975, the British public was horrified when 13 women were murdered over the course of six years, and it took until 1981 before police arrested the killer. The murderer was revealed to be Peter Sutcliffe, also known as The Yorkshire Ripper. The Yorkshire Ripper Files: A Very British Crime Story is a new three-part documentary from the BBC that re-examines the failings of the case – and the police force – at the time. When is it on TV? The Yorkshire Ripper Files: A Very British Crime Story starts on BBC Four on Tuesday 26 March at 9 pm. There are three episodes in the series.
Who is Peter Sutcliffe and who were his victims?
Sutcliffe first attacked a woman from Bradford, who didn’t press charges, in 1969. Peter Sutcliffe’s first murder victim was Wilma McCann, a mother of four, on 30 October 1975. He hit her with a hammer and stabbed her 15 times in the neck and chest. He then targeted a series of sex workers and lone women, carrying out a string of horrific and often fatal attacks on them.
The 13 women he killed were:
Marguerite Walls
Yvonne Pearson
Jayne MacDonald
Josephine Whitaker
Wilma McCann
Patricia Atkinson
Helen Rytka
Jacqueline Hill
Irene Richardson
Vera Millward
Barbara Leach
Jean Jordan
Emily Jackson
How was he eventually found?
There were several leads that led the police to interview and release Sutcliffe nine times over the investigation.
In 1977, a brand new, traceable £5 note was found on one of the victim’s bodies, Jean Jordan – whose corpse was discovered by Bruce Jones (later Les Battersby in Coronation Street). The police traced it to branches of the Midland Bank in Shipley and Bingley, as they discovered that one of 8,000 employees could have received it in their wage packet. Over three months, the police interviewed 5,000 men, including Sutcliffe, but they believed his alibi for the evening, as he had spent some of the evenings during which he murdered Jordan at a family party. Weeks of investigations on the origins of the £5 note eventually led to nothing. It wasn’t until January 1981, when Sutcliffe – in a car with 24-year-old sex worker Olivia Reivers in Sheffield – was stopped by the police and arrested for having false number plates. At Dewsbury police station, he was questioned in relation to the Yorkshire Ripper case as he matched many of the known physical characteristics of the photo fit. The next day police returned to the scene of the arrest and discovered a knife, hammer, and rope he had discarded. They questioned him again about the killings – and he confessed to being the perpetrator.
What happened at his trial and is he still in prison?
During his trial in 1981, Sutcliffe pleaded not guilty to murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility after a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, but his defense was rejected by a majority of the jury. He is serving 20 concurrent sentences of life imprisonment. The High Court dismissed an appeal by Sutcliffe in 2010, confirming that he would serve a whole life order and never be released from custody. He was transferred from prison to a high-security psychiatric hospital in March 1984. In August 2016, it was ruled that Sutcliffe was mentally fit to be returned to prison, and he was transferred that month to HM Prison Frankland in Country Durham.
Was Sutcliffe married?
Sutcliffe met Sonia Szurma on 14 February 1967 and they married on 10 August 1974 -the year before he began his murders and attacks. She reportedly suffered several miscarriages and they were informed she would not be able to have children. The couple moved into a house in Heaton, Bradford in 1977, where they lived at the time of Sutcliffe’s arrest. She remained married to him after the conviction and the couple didn’t divorce until 1994. She continues to live in their family home.
What will the documentary cover?
The Yorkshire Ripper Files: A Very British Crime Story poses a timely question: did 1970s attitudes to women influence the investigation with tragic consequences, derailing the police investigation and leaving the murderer free to kill again and again? Episode one, “Chapletown”, explores the early years of the investigation from 1975, when the first Yorkshire Ripper murder took place. The location of the first two murders in Chapeltown, then well-known as Leeds’ main red-light district, led to the police deciding prostitution was the connection between the attacks. After the second murder in January 1976, the police announced they were hunting a “prostitute killer” and the investigation became driven by this theory. They discounted other leads or connections from non-sex workers in the case.
Who is interviewed in the documentary?
The children of some of the very first murder victims, police officers who worked on the investigation and journalists who covered the murders are all interviewed as part of the film. The difference between the way the women were characterised by the investigation and the way they are remembered by those who knew and loved them is explored. After meeting a survivor of one of Sutcliffe’s earlier attacks, along with the daughter of another, the first episode reveals how their vital eye-witness evidence was ignored because neither of the women was prostitutes and so didn’t fit the victim profile in the police narrative.
Adopted from: inews.co.uk