[Amy]

Josephine Whittaker
4th April 1979

The final phase of Sutcliffe's "career" saw him widen his net to include women from any and all walks of life. Previously, he had trawled notorious red light districts, looking for obvious prostitutes who would naturally present a vulnerable target to his attentions. At least partly because of the enhanced police presence in the red light districts, he now looked further afield to target any woman anywhere who he believed could be a prostitute.

From now on, any and all women in the North could consider themselves at risk from the Yorkshire Ripper.

Josephine Whitaker has been visiting her grandparents on the night of April 4th. Invited to stay over, she declined as she had work the next morning and had left her contact lens case at home. The walk home took her across Savile Park - a handsome park in the centre of Halifax - to her home in Ivy Street.

By the sick fates that would decide the fate of another 6 women before his capture, Peter Sutcliffe was in the area. Having spent the night drinking with his friend Trevor Birdsall, he dropped him off but then headed out to Halifax instead of home.

Among the people walking their dogs in the early evening, Sutcliffe spotted Josephine, walking alone. He parked, took his hammer and sharpened screwdriver and began to follow her.

He caught up with her and the two began to converse as they walked - he expressing surprise that she would take a shortcut across the park and remarking that you didn't know who you could trust.

As they left the street and headed into the park, Sutcliffe got her to read the time from a clock tower. Pretending to marvel at her eyesight, it was merely an excuse to create a distraction as he removed his tools. As she walked on in front, he attacked cracking her skull with a single heavy blow, before hitting her twice more as she lay prostrate on the ground. He dragged her further away from the street lights and into the deeper darkness when he heard voices alarmingly close. Crouching still in the shadows, he waited until the passed before finishing his business.

Even as she moaned, he stabbed her 21 times in the stomach and chest with the screwdriver, a further 6 times in the leg and finally thrust it into her vagina.

Not until 6:30 the following morning, was the body identified as such.

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[Amy]

Marcella Claxton
9th May 1976

Marcella Claxton left a party in Chapeltown at 4:00am on the 9th of May 1976. She was drunk and a prostitute, but was not intent on working that night. She began the long walk back through the back streets around Roundhay Road to her home in Harehills. It was a journey she was lucky to complete alive.

By Sutcliffe's account, Claxton was amenable enough to his suggestion of £5 for sex and got in his car. He drove her to the Soldiers Field area of Roundhay Park, where she got out to urinate - eerily reminiscent of the circumstances in which Sutcliffe would later kill Irene Richardson in almost the exact same location. As she did so, Sutcliffe attacked from behind with 8 or 9 heavy blows of his hammer. Somehow, Marcella Claxon survived the assault and Sutcliffe, uncharacteristically, drove off without inflicting any mutilations or ensuring that she was dead. She told police that he had put a fiver in her hand and told her not to talk to the police - an assertion that Sutcliffe would later fiercely deny when confronted with it.

Marcella was a somewhat educationally subnormal black woman in 1970s Leeds - and Leeds police had a notorious reputation for racial bigotry. In fact, the police internally referred to her as 'just this side of a gorilla.'

As such - and despite Marcella's repeated calls to the police and what turned out to be an excellent photofit of her attacker - she was not counted among Sutcliffe's victims until after his arrest and confession.

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[Amy]

Marguerite Walls
20th August 1980

The Yorkshire Ripper's two previous victims - Barbara Leach and Josephine Whitaker - were young women cut down in the flush of youth. If any proof were needed that Peter Sutcliffe was now intent on taking the lives of any woman, regardless of class, age or appearance it was provided with the murder of Marguerite Walls.

A civil servant with the Department of Education and Science in Pudsey, she was 47 years old at the time of her death and working late to catch up on her work prior to a holiday. Eventually leaving her office between 9:30 and 10:30, she set off on the short, half mile walk back to her home in Farsley.

Peter Sutcliffe was driving through the area, intending to revisit one of his old haunts - Chapel Town. Seeing Marguerite walking alone he acted impulsively, stopping the car ahead of her and attacking her with his hammer on the street. As he rained blows on her head he shouted "filthy prostitute".

He dragged her, still alive, into a high-walled garden where he kneeled on her chest and strangled her. Stripping her body of all of its clothing except her tights, he finally left her remains in peace.

When her body was found by two gardeners the following day, the difference in M.O. was enough to make Detective Chief Superintendent James Hobson declare to the police: "We do not believe this is the work of the Yorkshire Ripper." The use of a ligature to effect the strangulation didn't sit easily with the Ripper's other killings and initially the attack was put down to another killer.

As Sutcliffe would later tell the police, this was actually a calculated strategy:

"Because the press and the media had attached a stigma to me, I had been known for some time as the Yorkshire Ripper, which to my mind, didn't ring true at all. It was just my way of killing them, but actually I found that the method of strangulation was even more horrible and took longer." Peter Sutcliffe

As her murder wasn't considered to be a Ripper murder, the police believed that the killer was in a 'dormant phase' and Sutcliffe remained at large and would commit 4 further attacks (only one of which was 'successful') before his eventual apprehension that year.

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[Amy]

Olive Smelt
15th July 1975

Olive Smelt began the 15th July 1975 as an office cleaner. By 11:45 that evening she would find herself name eternally bound to that of the Yorkshire Ripper - and left forever changed by her chance encounter with Peter Sutcliffe.

That evening, she was drinking in a pub in the centre of Halifax. Many of her Friday nights were spent in this ordinary way - a few drinks with friends, followed by a late night fish supper with her husband at home.

But also drinking in the pub that night was Peter Sutcliffe with his friend Trevor Birdsall. As he had done on previous occasions, he was decrying womanhood to Birdsall and picking out the various women in the pub who he claimed to know or suspect to be prostitutes.

Having indicated to Birdsall that he thought that Olive was "on the game" he made a remark to that effect to her in person as he passed her on the way to the toilet. Not one to take such a slight lightly, Smelt loudly put Sutcliffe in his place, a humiliation that left him seething.

By purest chance, his route with Birdsall took him past Olive as she made her own way home. Telling Birdsall "look - there's that prostitute we saw earlier", Sutcliffe asked him to stop and got out of the car as he wanted to see someone, appearing to head in the opposite direction to the woman. In fact, he cut down a path parallel to the one Olive was taking and ambushed her with his hammer on an alleyway off Woodside Lane.

He struck her two savage blows from behind and had slashed her buttocks twice when the headlights of an oncoming car swept over him. He fled back to Birdsall's still waiting car, unaware that Olive had survived his attack. She was discovered and whisked to Halifax Royal Infirmary and then to Leeds where she underwent a brain operation followed by 10 days of recuperation.

Despite the suddenness of the onslaught, she was able to provide a vague description of her attacker to police - noting his slight build and dark hair and facial hair.

She went on to survive until 2011, when she died aged 82, her life indelibly marked by that night in a dark alleyway in Halifax.

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[Amy]

Patricia Atkinson
23rd April 1977

Manningham in Bradford has become infamous for its links to prostitution, largely thanks to the works of Kay Mellor, who has set several of her books and screenplays in the area. However, in 1977 even that dismal claim to infamy was usurped by the murder of Patricia Atkinson.

Particia Atkinson - also known as Tina - was, like several of Peter Sutcliffe's victims, drunk when she met him. On the evening of the 23rd April she had consumed something like 20 units of alcohol according to the pathologist's report. She had been steadily drinking in two of her regular haunts; the Perseverance and the Carlisle where at 10:30 she loudly announced she was leaving.

On her weaving, unsteady path home, Sutcliffe saw her banging on the roof of a car and screaming obscenities at the driver - another dispute between prostitute and client. But like others before her, she got in Sutcliffe's car with no preamble.

Arriving at her flat, they entered - the Ripper concealing a claw hammer about him. And soon, it was in grisly use, as he hit the back of her head with four deadly blows. Heaving her up onto the bed, Sutcliffe exposed her body - pulling up her bra to reveal her breasts, as he had done in several cases already - and set about his evil works.

Alternatively clawing at and hitting her with the opposing ends of the hammer, he left grazes and oblong marks, before attempting to slash her body with a knife. His lust satisfied, he threw a sheet over her body before leaving, noting that she was still "gurgling".

For the first and only time, he had killed indoors. And by moving his operations to Bradford he had thrown more strain on the fledgling police investigation which until this date had only been concerned with Leeds. The bloody footprint he left behind matched that that he left at the scene of Emily Jackson and by now the police were aware that they were facing a brutal, random assassin and one that would not respect geographic bounds.

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[Amy]

Tracy Browne
27th August 1975

Despite Sutcliffe's later claims to have been driven by God to kill prostitutes, one of his earliest known attacks was on a 14 year old schoolgirl, far from the seedy red light districts that would become his hunting grounds.

Tracy Browne had been visiting her friend in Silsden, just a mile from the farm where she lived with her parents and sister Mandy. Under strict instructions to be home no later than 10:30pm, she had left her friend to make her way up the narrow lane that led up the hill to her home.

As she did so, she fell into step with a man, who engaged her in a little light conversation - pausing now and again to blow his nose and fasten his shoelace. In apparently companionable silence, the two continued up the lane until the man fell back a little way behind Tracy.

Suddenly, she was attacked from behind. She would later describe her attacker as grunting like tennis star Jimmy Connors with each blow of his hammer. Five blows rained down on her head, causing massive injuries. Had a car not approached up the lane, any more blows would almost certainly have spelled her death. As it was, Sutcliffe picked up her body and threw her over a hedge before making his mistake.

Despite her massive head trauma - surgeons would later remove a sliver of bone from her brain - Tracy managed to stagger back to her home and raise the alarm. More amazingly, she was able to recall her attacked in considerable detail and provide police with a photofit that would prove to be uncannily reminiscent of Sutcliffe when he was arrested.

Because of her age and the rural location of the attack, police refused to consider her a ripper victim. As the investigation progressed, she would make her father drive her to the police station to try and make them release her photofit.

Sutcliffe finally confessed to the attack on Tracy Browne during his interviews with Keith Hellawell in 1992.

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[Amy]

Vera Millward
16th May 1978

Sutcliffe's choice of victims was, until 1978 exclusively prostitutes (accepting that he really believed that Jayne McDonald was a prostitute) and all led troubled existences. Perhaps Vera Millward most fitted the popular image of 'human chaff' that (often unfairly) surrounded sex workers then as much as now. The Spanish-born 40 year old was sallow and thin, and had been through 3 major operations between 1976 and 1977 - operations which had cost her one of her lungs.

On the night of 16th May 1978, she left her boyfriend to "get some cigs" - an explanation which he knew only too well was nothing but a pretext for her other assignations. According to his testimony, she had a "regular" client on Tuesday and Thursday nights who would meet her outside her flat.

However on this fateful night, the client didn't show and she remained in the alleyway outside her house until a car flashed its lights. The car was driven by Peter Sutcliffe. As they drove the couple of miles to the grounds of Manchester Royal Infirmary - a popular haunt for prostitutes - Vera had no idea what fate awaited her.

As she got out of the car, Sutcliffe attacked her with his hammer. A witness later claimed to have heard 3 screams but put them down to the probability of being from a patient at the hospital. When finally she was dead, Sutcliffe used his knife to stab her repeatedly under the ribs and slash her stomach so violently and deeply that her intestines spilled out

"I didn't get any blood on me on that occasion. I think I was wearing my brown car coat, which you've got. Following Millward, the compulsion inside me seemed to lay dormant, but eventually the feeling came welling up, and each time they were more random and indiscriminate. I now realised I had the urge to kill any woman and I thought that this would eventually get me caught, but I think that in my sub-conscious this was what I really wanted."

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[Amy]

Wilma McCann
30th October 1975
The first known victim of Peter Sutcliffe. Her death marked the point at which the shy, ordinary Bradfordian began on the road to becoming Britain's most feared and hated man - and still casts a shadow over her family today.

Wilma McCann was the first known victim of Peter Sutcliffe. He had attacked before, but his victims had lived. From this day forward, he was a murderer.

The poverty of her life can be judged by her working pattern. Leaving her children in the doubtful care of her eldest daughter - herself just 7 years old - she left for the pubs and clubs at 7:30pm, as she did most nights. Blood samples taken later would indicate that she drank as much as 14 measures of spirits as she flitted from pub to pub, ending in the Room At The Top club. Finally leaving to head home at 1:00am, carrying curry and chips she embarked on the tragic last half hour of her life, staggering recklessly and trying to flag down a lift home, despite the fact that the walk was short. At least one lorry driver, attempting to help her, drove off when greeted by a fusillade of abuse from the drunken McCann.

That moment represented her last chance.

Sutcliffe was passing through the area and he too stopped to offer her a lift. It wasn't long before she asked him if he wanted "business." Sutcliffe, business of entirely more sinister kind on his mind, agreed and drove her to the Prince Phillip playing fields - just 100 yards from her house and family.

Sutcliffe would later say that McCann turned abusive when he expressed surprise at her £5 fee and asked for something more "romantic". His suggestion that they do it on the grass outside was met with sneering agreement. As she sat on the grass, unbuttoning her trousers, Sutcliffe pulled out his hidden hammer and bludgeoned her to death.

Her body was found 6 hours later by the milkman. Her hair matted with blood, her breasts exposed and stab wounds all over her torso.

Sutcliffe's career as one of the most notorious and feared serial killers in British history had begun. He would later say of the murder during questioning:

"What a damn stupid thing to do just to keep somebody quiet. If I was thinking logical at the time, I would have stopped and told someone I'd hit her with the hammer. That was the turning point. I realise I over-reacted at the time, nothing I have done since then affected me like this."

Over-reacted??

Wilma McCann's son Richard is now a motivational speaker who uses his experience of overcoming the trauma to help others. He has revealed that Wilma escaped to Leeds from her abusive husband Gerry. Following her murder, Richard and his siblings were sent back into his care and faced a horrific ordeal of beatings and abuse both physical and mental. Mention of Wilma was forbidden in the house and the children had to face both constant taunts about her occupation and renewed horror with every subsequent victim that Sutcliffe claimed.

In 2010 he told the Northern Echo:

"Unfortunately, my dad wasn’t what I had hoped. He used to drink whisky out of the bottle and they don’t call it the demon drink for nothing. He drowned our dog in the bath, he used to beat us with sticks and one day I thought he was going to drown me."

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[Amy]

Yvonne Pearson
21st January 1978

Like many of the sad stragglers of humanity that Peter Sutcliffe would claim, Yvonne Pearson lived an unstable life of drink and prostitution. On the night of the 21st of January, five days away from a scheduled appearance in court for soliciting, she left her two children with a 16 year old neighbour and headed to The Flying Dutchman pub. On her mind were two things: drink and 'business'.

Around 9:30, she left the pub in search of 'business' and saw a near-collision between two cars. One of the cars pulled out of a sidestreet, forcing the other to brake. The driver in the braking vehicle was Peter Sutcliffe and, in the act of slowing down, he attracted the attention of Vyonne - who tapped on his window and got into the passenger seat, saying that it was just "good timing" that he'd happened along.

Sutcliffe, never one to pass up an opportunity, agreed to his usual £5 fee and drove her to a piece of waste ground behind the mill where his father worked. As she exited the car, he followed her with his hammer and attacked her with several heavy blows.

It was at this moment that he came perilously close to being discovered as another car pulled in alongside Sutcliffe's. Panicking, he dragged the still breathing woman alongside an old sofa and frantically pushed handfuls of horsehair into her mouth before holding her nose closed. For what seemed like an age, he cowered waiting for the car to leave.

Afterwards, he failed to carry out his usual mutilations. Something in the act of nearly being caught had enraged him and he kicked her body around instead - although he found time to expose her breasts and pull her trousers down as was one of his trademarks.

Finally, as his rage subsided, he threw soil and rubble onto her body and dragged the sofa on top to hide the crime where it would lay, undiscovered, for a further 2 months.

A Ripper Killing?

At first blush, the police were hesitant in ascribing this murder to the Ripper. Firstly, there was none of his usual mutilation of the body. Secondly, despite the head trauma, she had met her death through suffocation. Thirdly, the blows to the head looked to the pathologist more like the result of a rock or boulder than a hammer. And finally, the body appeared to have been tampered with weeks after her death - something which Sutcliffe denied involvement in.

Under her arm was a copy of the Daily Mirror, dated one month after her death and apparently placed there deliberately.

Minor mysteries in the context, but enough to cast some legitimate doubt as to whether Sutcliffe had really committed this crime. Grist to the mill for those who believe that Sutcliffe was merely a copycat of another killer active at the same time.

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[Amy]

Hidden Murders?

Peter Sutcliffe's campaign of murder began 'officially' with the murder of Wilma McCann in October 1975. In the summer of that same year, he had already attacked 14 year old Tracy Browne and 46 year old office worker Olive Smelt - both of whom survived. Yet it has long been suspected that Sutcliffe's spree may have started as long as 6 years prior to this apparently pivotal year and that his tally may be much higher than officially allowed.

Indeed, reports into Sutcliffe are still being kept from the public eye that suggest that police not only bungled the investigation into his crimes, but also wrote off as many as 22 other potential victims - leaving them classified as 'unsolved' in their haste to put Sutcliffe behind bars.

As far back as 1969, Sutcliffe was arrested, charged and convicted for 'going equipped for stealing' - having been caught in possession of a hammer. Not only was he caught, but he was caught in an area well known for prostitution. In September of that same year, he attacked a prostitute with a stone in a sock - a crime he confided to his close friend Trevor Birdsall (who would later try to turn Sutcliffe in).

If the official story of the Yorkshire Ripper attacks is to be believed, Sutcliffe then lay 'dormant' for six years before emerging again in 1975 to begin his established 5 year reign of terror over the women of the north of England. In fact, careful investigation suggests that Sutcliffe was active throughout that time and that the number of his victims was actually far higher than the 13 for which he was convicted in haste in 1981. Some have put the number as high as an astonishing 36.

Many who have studied the Sutcliffe case find the manner of his conviction bizarre. A man who evaded police for 6 years, whilst holding down regular, well-paid employment and maintaining a marriage without drawing suspicion to himself is almost the archetype of a true psychopath. While outwardly sane, he was driven to hurt and kill and yet could face investigating officers and give no hint of distress or worry that they were on his scent. He was not, by any measure, insane. And yet the prosecutors sought to have a plea of manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility put before the court.

Only thanks to the insistence of presiding Judge Boreham was evidence of Sutcliffe's claimed "insanity" put before the court and roundly rejected by jurors - who convicted him for murder without extenuating circumstance.

Even then, at his trial, evidence was not shown to the prosecution or jury to show just how calculating Sutcliffe was. Far from the opportunistic, random killer he was painted at, he not only had equipment to hand for murder, but he ritualised his killings - using an adapted jumper as a pair of "killing trousers" - padded at the knee to facilitate him kneeling by the bodies of his victims to masturbate. These trousers - along with other critical evidence are now classed as 'lost'. It might be argued that such losses are highly convenient for an embarrassed police force.

The sexual impulses and complication of Sutcliffe's psyche were brushed over in favour of "voices" he claimed to have heard telling him to rid the world of prostitutes. And yet as among his first attributed victims was a 14 year old girl, far from the city in a secluded semi-rural area. There is simply no way that Sutcliffe could have mistaken her for a prostitute.

So what were the police hiding - and what are they continuing to hide to this day? It took 25 years for Lawrence Byford's damning enquiry into the Ripper Investigation to be published, yet recent work has uncovered evidence that the police continue to hold back details on a string of murders - not even constrained to the North of England - which remain unsolved but bear strong hallmarks of Sutcliffe's methods. Worse still, men remain convicted to this day of murders which may have been committed by Sutcliffe - their voices unheard.

That the police were incompetent in their handling of the Ripper Inquiry is without doubt. But the truth could be worse than mere incompetence. By colluding with Sutcliffe, they may have hidden the true nature and scale of his crimes from the public eye for almost 40 years.

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