In relation to my "Missing" blogpost in which I focused partly on The Yorkshire Ripper's marital home in Bradford, I received the following comment from Debbie Williams:-
"In 1980 I'd just started studying at Sheffield University. I still remember the fear we felt as The Ripper had murdered a student at Leeds University. The student union organised transport to take us back to our halls of residence and my parents paid for taxis, rather than let me walk home. We were jubilant and so relieved when Peter Sutcliffe was caught, frightening close to the University campus. Looking back, I wonder if Sutcliffe would have been caught sooner if most of his victims hadn't been prostitutes?"
I remember that time very well. I had joined a Workers Educational Association course in creative writing in The University of Sheffield's Arts Tower. There were posters on every floor urging women to take their safety seriously. Don't go home alone/Take taxis at night etc.. And this was all because of the terror that The Ripper was causing.
It affected my wife Shirley who was a young hospital nurse at the time. Fortunately, she had a little car to bring her home but various levels of anxiety were experienced by all female hospital workers whose shift patterns meant they often left work at nighttime.
Throughout his deadly campaign, there had never been a known attack here in Sheffield. Nearly all of his unfortunate victims were bludgeoned to death up in West Yorkshire - Bradford, Leeds, Huddersfield and Halifax. He killed thirteen women and severely injured several others. One of his survivors recalled him shouting, "Filthy prostitute!" as he struck her.
The fear in Sheffield was pretty strong even though nobody had been attacked here but up in Bradford and Leeds the levels of fear must have been off the scale. Female university students had been targeted in addition to prostitutes whose lives are just as precious anyway.
The Yorkshire Ripper was finally captured by accident in a dark office car park off Melbourne Avenue just a mile and a half from this keyboard. It was January 2nd 1981 and he had driven 24 year old Olivia Reivers there. He had his trademark ball-pein hammer in the boot (American: trunk) of his car. Whatever might have been about to happen was stopped by a pair of policemen slowly cruising down the avenue in a squad car. They did a vehicle check and discovered that Sutcliffe's car was displaying false number plates. He was promptly arrested.
The next day one of those police officers returned to the arrest scene and found the hammer in bushes where The Ripper had been allowed to urinate before being taken to the local police station. Then, thankfully, the clues were joined up and after forty eight hours Sutcliffe admitted who he was.
Sutcliffe and Sonia on their wedding day in 1974
It always seems these killers are captured by fluke or by accident.
ReplyDeleteScary time, though, for folks, especially women, in that area!
Thank heavens that 99% of people live decent, law-abiding lives.
DeleteI read this and then started down the google hole reading about the Yorkshire Ripper and then I was late for work!
ReplyDeleteI'll read more later
Sorry about that. Researching The Yorkshire Ripper is like entering a maze with no clear way out.
DeleteI remember this as if yesterday. I was mid teens and quite an anxious person. I used to keep a horse in a village not far away from here called Tockholes. It was a very lonely walk there early mornings and i was a nervous wreck. Even though Bradford is quite a way off I still worried and felt very vulnerable. I was so relieved when they caught him!
ReplyDeleteI am sure that trepidation you felt was shared by many women across the north of England. He terrorised the nation.
DeleteMany thanks to those observant police officers.
ReplyDeleteSpecial thanks to Sergeant Robert Ring whose instincts told him to return to the car park.
DeleteI've never seen photos of them before. There is nothing that I can see that indicates evil in their faces.
ReplyDeleteThe psychology of a killer like Sutcliffe is complicated but I should say there are always reasons why - often going back to childhood.
DeleteOne of the lads in our shared house had a strikingly similar face, beard, and hair to Sutcliffe in that marriage photograph, almost his double. The years were different, the house around 1974 and the ripper picture emerging 6 or 7 years after we had all moved on, but, awful as it was, it caused us some amusement when we met a few years later.
ReplyDeleteDid it ever cross your mind that he was the so-called "Ripper"?
DeleteI think there might have been early photofit pictures (is that what they were called?) of what the ripper might have looked like, and we made jokes at the time, but only years later when photographs were published did we realise how alike they were. He had to cut his hair and shave off his beard because he became fed up with the comments. If I showed a picture I have of us in the shared house you would swear it was Peter Sutcliffe. But around the same time we were in the house, the Tyneside Jack hoax tape was publicised, which was clearly not his voice, so the teasing stopped until pictures of the real ripper were made public. In those days, of course, it was possible to find humour in anything, even the most terrible things. Today one would be immediately "cancelled" and reported for hate crime.
DeleteI read this Tasker.
DeleteHe also killed two women in Manchester YP. He should have been called the Yorkshire Lancashire Ripper.
ReplyDeleteHe also attacked a woman in Bakewell, Derbyshire and possibly in Deptford, London as well when Sonia was at teaching college down there. I wonder who coined the term The Yorkshire Ripper and was it useful?
DeleteWe've had more than our fair share of serial killers in the USA. When I saw your post title I thought you meant Jack the Ripper. I'd never heard of this guy, but I can imagine the terror he caused.
ReplyDeleteI guess some newspaper coined the term "Yorkshire Ripper".
DeleteThere is a line from an Addams Family movie, "for halloween I am going as a serial killer, they look just like everyone else!"
ReplyDeleteThat is very true but not very funny.
DeleteI just don't have any words. The fear and horror that one man could cause.
ReplyDeleteIn attacking so many women, he detrimentally affected the lives of thousands of others. Many innocent men were viewed with suspicion - as if they might have been The Ripper.
DeleteIt's a real shame that these sorts of people existed that took away the innocence of millions upon millions of people. I would be terrified to let my children walk to school these days though I thought nothing of it when I was a child.
ReplyDeleteIs it that we know too much now?
DeleteIt's astonishing what some people are capable of doing.
ReplyDeleteHe looked quite normal but he was a monster.
DeleteThe hype of The Ripper et al does women no favour. Keeps the female behind closed doors. The first time I got a whiff of this shortly after my arrival in England. Buckinghamshire, early Eighties. The Fox made the news. Burglary and worse. Did I keep my windows closed? No. Same time, same location I used to go for early morning runs (6 am), on my own, along the Canal on the left, cows on the right. Enter the scaremongers/spoilsports telling me I was tempting fate. Did I stop running those routes? No.
ReplyDeleteThere are, obviously, risks I don't take - like running into Manwomen [as they used to be called in the motherland] in broad daylight. There is an LBQT venue down the road where I live now. Come Happy Hour men in drag strutting their stuff as they walk down the street coming towards me on my way home. If eyes were daggers I'd be dead. I have no idea what their beef with me is. It's all gravy down my back.
U
I agree with Ursula that women should be free to walk where and when they want, without fear of attack. However, it is hard to imagine the level of fear women felt whilst Sutcliffe remained at large. The police missed opportunities to capture him, not least by concentrating on the hoax letters and recordings from 'Wearside Jack'
ReplyDeleteThe police did not have the benefit of computers back then but they made some awful blunders. They could have saved a lot of women a lot of anxiety. The nearly had the bastard several times.
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