00:00:05
-On January the 2nd, 1981, two policemen approached
a parked car on Melbourne Avenue
00:00:11
in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, to talk with the couple
sitting in the front. The officers had no idea
they were about to arrest
00:00:19
a man who'd murdered 13 women and evaded the authorities
for over five years. -The relief that the man behind
these horrible offenses
00:00:30
had finally been caught
and was behind bars was immense. -Peter Sutcliffe,
the man the press were calling
00:00:36
the Yorkshire Ripper,
had a cold-blooded M.O. He was attacking helpless women
with a hammer
00:00:42
before stabbing them to death
with a screwdriver. -The streets became
quieter and quieter
00:00:48
because on the horizon
was this monster called
the Yorkshire Ripper. -The whole of Britain
was terrified
00:00:56
by the elusive murderer who seemed to kill
for his own enjoyment. -Peter, in my opinion,
was a ruthless,
00:01:03
coldhearted killer who actually enjoyed
going out and killing. He got a thrill.
He got a buzz.
00:01:11
-Peter Sutcliffe,
the Yorkshire Ripper, had undoubtedly become one of
the world's most evil killers.
00:01:18
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Peter Sutcliffe is one of
the most infamous killers in British history.
00:01:43
For five years,
he evaded capture while brutally murdering
13 young women across the north of England.
00:01:50
It was an investigation
with twists and turns and a case that still haunts
the British public to this day.
00:01:57
-For years, women and girls felt that simply
leaving their homes at night meant taking their lives
in their hands.
00:02:05
-When Sutcliffe
was eventually apprehended on January the 2nd, 1981,
it brought an end to a manhunt
00:02:11
that had both terrified
and captivated the nation. The press had dubbed him
the Yorkshire Ripper.
00:02:17
For women,
it was a very frightening time, and they were stuck
in this awful position
00:02:22
of being told
they shouldn't go out at night. It had an enormous social effect
on the country.
00:02:28
-As well as his 13 victims, Sutcliffe had attacked
at least seven more women. His arrest was a huge relief
00:02:35
for the under-pressure
detectives at West Yorkshire Police. -And he attacked random.
00:02:40
We couldn't anticipate
his moves. The whole of
the north of England was held in a --
well, a grip of terror, really,
00:02:48
by this man. It was a sort of --
I can only describe it as a Gothic-type cloud
over the area.
00:02:56
-But the Yorkshire Ripper's
story begins over 70 years ago. Peter Sutcliffe was born
on the 2nd of June, 1946,
00:03:05
in the market town of Bingley on the outskirts
of Bradford, West Yorkshire. -He was the youngest
of quite a large family.
00:03:13
His brothers and sisters
were all of strong character. They were all working-class,
could look after themselves,
00:03:22
but Peter was a shy boy and very much attached
to his mother. -His mother was somebody who was
very much dominated
00:03:30
and controlled by his father, so I think he had quite
a lot of sympathy for his mum,
00:03:35
and he thought the world of her
as a child, but Peter was somebody who was
quite shy, quite awkward.
00:03:41
He was quite skinny and scrawny, and I don't think
he ever lived up to his father's expectations,
00:03:47
and I think that planted that
seed of shame in Peter Sutcliffe that would come to shape
the rest of his life.
00:03:53
-Sutcliffe's awkward demeanor
as a child manifested
into a dysfunctional adulthood,
00:03:59
demonstrated in
his early career choices. -Peter Sutcliffe had a variety
of different jobs
00:04:04
throughout his life. He worked as a gravedigger
for quite a period of time, and it was reported that
he stole things from the corpses
00:04:13
that he was burying. Now, that suggests, to me, that he wasn't horrified
or repulsed by dead bodies,
00:04:20
and that's something that would
be quite influential later on. -On Valentine's Day, 1967,
00:04:27
21-year-old Sutcliffe
met Sonia Szurma. The pair began
a long-term relationship,
00:04:33
eventually getting married
in August 1974. -The relationship that he had
with his wife, Sonia,
00:04:41
appeared to have been
a decent one, and I think he would have
treated her fairly well
00:04:46
because she served
a purpose for him. Women like his mother
and his wife, he saw as carers
and nurturers --
00:04:53
people who would look after him. Other women, I think,
he saw somewhat differently.
00:04:58
I think Peter Sutcliffe's view
of women is very black-and-white. They are either Madonnas,
or they are whores,
00:05:03
so they're either
these perfect domestic angels, or they're
these sinful creatures.
00:05:08
-These opposing views on women
collided with one another when a family revelation
dramatically altered
00:05:15
23-year-old Sutcliffe's world. His mother, whom he'd
looked up to as a child, had been unfaithful.
00:05:22
-His mother had had an affair
with a policeman, and his father had decided
to confront his wife
00:05:31
at a hotel where she was meeting
this particular man and took Peter with him. -Peter's father basically
humiliated her and said,
00:05:41
"Look. You know, I know
all about what's going on, and the children found out,
as well."
00:05:46
So I think this kind of
further cemented ideas as to what women were,
what could be expected of them,
00:05:54
always to be cautious
and wary of them. -I think there is
every possibility that after seeing his mother
and seeing what happened,
00:06:02
that that possibly
preyed on his mind and affected his attitude
towards women. -Sutcliffe began to visit
00:06:09
the red-light districts
of Yorkshire and find solace in prostitutes,
but his feelings for these women
00:06:16
would soon lead to violence
and eventually murder. -It's never been established precisely when Peter
started his attacks.
00:06:25
The first recorded one,
or the first known one, was sometime in 1969 when he was with a friend
called Trevor Birdsong,
00:06:35
and Peter told Trevor
that he was looking for a particular prostitute
who owed him money,
00:06:41
and they cruised Leeds, and Peter told Trevor
to suddenly stop the car. -He jumped out of the car,
suddenly disappeared,
00:06:51
followed her down the street, and whacked her
on the back of the head, and then ran sweating
back to the car and away.
00:06:58
The following day,
the police came around and confronted Sutcliffe. He acknowledged
that he'd struck the woman.
00:07:05
He said he'd just given her
a light blow with a hand, and because the woman
was working as a prostitute,
00:07:11
she didn't want any more
problems with the police, and so she didn't go ahead
with a complaint.
00:07:16
Had he been arrested then,
had he been listed as somebody attacking a woman
in this aggressive way,
00:07:25
who knows whether or not it would have been much easier
to find him. -Whether their were
other attacks
00:07:30
between 1969 and 1975,
nobody really knows, but his first real attack
came in 1975.
00:07:40
-By October of that year, Sutcliffe was living with
his wife, Sonia, in Bradford
00:07:45
and working as
a long-distance lorry driver. On the morning of
October the 30th, 1975,
00:07:52
just 12 miles away
in the Chapeltown area of Leeds, the body of 28-year-old
Wilma McCann
00:07:58
was discovered
in a local park. -Wilma McCann
was a Scottish woman who had come down to Yorkshire.
00:08:05
She was working as a prostitute. She was very hard up, and it
was very difficult for her
00:08:10
because she had young children,
young family, to support, and I think that was
the only way she felt
00:08:15
she could get enough money. -The attack on Wilma McCann
set in motion what would become
a clear pattern
00:08:21
and regular method of ambush
by the killer. -His modus operandi
was to use a ball-peen hammer
00:08:30
and was to strike them
very hard and very fast on the back of the head
so they fell unconscious.
00:08:37
He used his hammer and hit her
over the back of the head, and then he stabbed her 15 times
in the neck, chest, and abdomen.
00:08:47
-But the police were no closer
to catching the killer, and three months later,
on the 20th of January, 1976,
00:08:54
another woman
was murdered in Leeds -- 42-year-old wife
and mother Emily Jackson
00:09:00
who'd vanished after a night out
at her local pub. Emily's son, Neil,
was 17 years old at the time.
00:09:07
He remembers receiving
the tragic news on that fateful morning. -I've come downstairs.
00:09:14
My dad's loading
one of the vans up for work, and I'm getting my boots on
ready for going to work,
00:09:22
and having a pot of tea when there was
a knock at the door, and it was the police,
00:09:28
and that's when I first knew -- first knew when life
was over for Dad when the police
knocked at the door.
00:09:36
I can still remember it
plain as day. -Again, a hammer had been used
in the brutal attack.
00:09:44
Emily had also been stabbed
a total of 52 times with a screwdriver. Like Wilma McCann,
Emily Jackson had been
00:09:51
working as a prostitute
to make ends meet. -It was just to help a family
in dire straits
00:09:57
is what I've been told
afterwards. When family were at work, why,
she went elsewhere,
00:10:06
but I didn't realize
'til well after. -This time, police were able
to recover from the scene
00:10:12
a key piece of evidence. On Emily's right thigh was a
very firm and visible footprint
00:10:18
from a size-7 Wellington boot. -For some inexplicable reason, he stamped on her thigh
with such force
00:10:27
that it left an imprint of the
sole of his boot on her thigh. Our police tried
to trace that boot,
00:10:35
or the manufacturers
of the boot, which they did, and then try and find out people
who had bought them,
00:10:41
but it didn't come to anything. -Once again,
the trail went cold. It was over a year
until a murder
00:10:46
with a familiar M.O.
took place in Leeds. On the morning of
February the 4th, 1977,
00:10:53
the body of 28-year-old
Irene Richardson was discovered. She'd been savagely murdered --
00:10:59
another prostitute
killed with a hammer. West Yorkshire police
were suddenly dealing
00:11:03
with a serial killer. What they didn't realize is that
this was just the beginning
00:11:08
of what would become one of the most infamous
series of murders in British history.
00:11:15
Less than three months after
the death of a third victim, Irene Richardson,
the killer struck again.
00:11:21
On the night of
the 23rd of April, 1977, 32-year-old prostitute
Patricia Atkinson
00:11:27
became victim number 4. She was murdered
in her own flat, this time not in Leeds,
but in nearby Bradford.
00:11:35
-She believed that if she
invited customers into her flat, she was safe because all
the killings had taken place
00:11:42
in isolated parks
or back alleys. So she thought she was safe,
but she wasn't. -The killer hit Patricia
four times around the head
00:11:50
with a hammer and then mutilated
her body with a knife. This time, detectives found
a clue to link the murders
00:11:56
of Patricia Atkinson
and Emily Jackson. -The police found the same
boot mark on the bedclothes
00:12:03
at Patricia's house --
Patricia's flat -- as they had found
on Emily Jackson's thigh.
00:12:09
-This crucial link confirmed
the authorities' worst fears -- the killer was expanding
his hunting ground,
00:12:14
and he seemed to have
a favored target. All four murder victims
had been working as prostitutes.
00:12:21
-They were
very vulnerable women. It was very easy to
persuade them to get into a car.
00:12:25
It was very easy to find them, and they were used to
not being protected in any way,
00:12:33
and so he would be able
to drive along, ask them if
they were up for business, and they would get into the car.
00:12:40
And he realized then that as long as there was nobody
watching what was going on,
00:12:45
he could do what he liked. -But the next victim
would buck the trend and shock the nation.
00:12:52
On the morning of
the 26th of June, 1977, just over two months after
the murder of Patricia Atkinson,
00:12:59
two children
in an adventure playground made a gruesome discovery -- the body of 16-year-old girl
Jayne McDonald.
00:13:07
-She wasn't a prostitute. She was a young girl going home,
minding her own business.
00:13:14
But suddenly
a schoolgirl was attacked, and that changed
everybody's perception of the sort of man
they were looking for.
00:13:22
-By this stage, if it was
a woman who was vulnerable, he was happy to kill them.
00:13:26
-Any woman was vulnerable if they were found
on the streets late at night. -This latest kill caused
a great public outcry.
00:13:36
Now courtesy
of the tabloid press, the killer had a nickname --
the Yorkshire Ripper.
00:13:42
-After Jayne McDonald's murder, the press then,
and television, actually, became more interested
in what was happening.
00:13:51
-You have to remember that
nothing had happened like this since the Jack the Ripper
in London in the century before.
00:13:59
-What did become clear
was the attitude of that time because she was described
in some newspapers
00:14:07
as his first innocent victim -- as though, in some ways,
the prostitutes had been guilty
00:14:13
of making themselves
vulnerable to him. It caused a lot of anger
amongst women, amongst feminists,
00:14:21
and amongst
any commentator with a heart. She was a victim
who prompted the police
00:14:26
to work much harder than,
I think, they had been working
at the time. -What this did
in the public mind
00:14:33
was actually create mass fear. There was a great deal of fear, and as the killings went on
and the attacks went on,
00:14:44
that fear increased
on a monumental basis. Women were frightened
of going out at night.
00:14:51
Women questioned
where their husbands were, boyfriends were,
what they were doing
00:14:56
when a particular attack
had taken place, and they, perhaps, weren't where
they said they had been.
00:15:01
-The increased media attention
in the case intensified the ongoing suffering
of the victims' loved ones.
00:15:08
-It was forced everywhere. It don't matter where you went. Papers, TV, buses, back ads --
00:15:16
It was advertised everywhere. There were no way
you could get away from it. It made it harder for me,
just seeing photo of Mum
00:15:26
and being not there
to talk to her. -With a full-scale manhunt
now taking place,
00:15:35
West Yorkshire police were
desperate to capture the Ripper before he struck again,
00:15:39
but he was seemingly
always one step ahead. His next murder would take place
across the Pennines.
00:15:46
On the morning of
the 9th of October, 1977, the heavily mutilated body of 20-year-old prostitute
Jean Jordan
00:15:54
was discovered
on an allotment in Manchester. She had been dead
for over a week.
00:15:59
This time, detectives found
an important clue -- a newly minted £5 note
in Jean's handbag
00:16:06
which led them to
a 31-year-old lorry driver from Bradford, Peter Sutcliffe. -The police found the £5 note.
00:16:12
They traced it via the banks and found that it had
gone through the hands of, probably, 300 people,
00:16:19
one of them being Peter. Peter was interviewed, but on the night in question,
he said he was at a party,
00:16:27
and his members of his family confirmed that
he had been at the party. -The police didn't know it,
but they had found the murderer.
00:16:35
It would not be the last time Peter Sutcliffe slipped through
the fingers of the authorities.
00:16:40
Between December 1977
and May 1978, he would kill three more women,
all of them prostitutes,
00:16:47
all of them bludgeoned to death
with a hammer. -I think that the longer that
serial killers get away with it,
00:16:53
the more bold and the more,
kind of, dramatic their offending becomes and the more prolific
they become
00:17:01
because they've been flying
under the radar for so long. They may have even been
interviewed by the police
00:17:07
and subsequently
not charged with anything. Then you get to the point where they feel
completely untouchable.
00:17:12
-On December the 14th, 1977, one woman survived an attack
by the Ripper -- 25-year-old prostitute
Marilyn Moore.
00:17:21
She described her assailant
in detail to the police, and a photo-fit picture
was released.
00:17:26
By May 1978,
West Yorkshire police had interviewed Sutcliffe
on seven different occasions
00:17:32
but continually ruled him out
of the investigation. Lead detective George Oldfield's
attention
00:17:38
had been diverted elsewhere. -I'm Jack. I see you are still having
no luck catching me.
00:17:45
I have the greatest respect
for you, George, but Lord. You are no nearer
catching me now
00:17:54
than four years ago
when I started. -What really derailed
the investigation -- well, largely derailed
the investigation --
00:18:03
was a tape from a chap
in the northeast from Wearside who sent George Oldfield a tape,
00:18:11
which became known as
"Wearside Jack's tape," in which he said,
"You haven't caught me.
00:18:17
You've been looking
for four years," and really taunting the police. -He mocked George Oldfield
and said,
00:18:24
"Your men are not doing
very well. I've done another one, and you still
haven't caught me."
00:18:29
And, you know, the Geordie
accent or Wearside accent -- and as a result of that,
00:18:36
the police discounted people
like Peter Sutcliffe. -It had been almost a year
since Sutcliffe had struck,
00:18:42
but early on the morning
of the 5th of April, 1979, a woman discovered the mutilated
and bloodied body
00:18:48
of his 10th victim, 19-year-old
building society worker Josephine Whitaker in Halifax.
00:18:54
The Yorkshire Ripper's
322-day hiatus had come to a devastating end. In August 1979,
00:19:02
West Yorkshire police
would pay another visit to Sutcliffe's house
in Garden Lane, Bradford.
00:19:07
Officer Andrew Laptew
will never forget the day he stood face-to-face
with the Yorkshire Ripper.
00:19:13
-The reason for going
to see Sutcliffe was because his vehicle
had been sighted in three red-light areas --
00:19:23
in Leeds, in Bradford,
and in Manchester. Talking to Sutcliffe
was like pulling teeth.
00:19:31
You'd say to him,
"What do you do for a living?" "I'm a driver." "Where do you work?"
00:19:36
"Oh, Clarke's at Shipley." He wouldn't volunteer
any information without it being asked from him,
00:19:43
and one of our ploys -- tactic, if you like,
an icebreaker -- was to say to the wife,
00:19:49
"Now's your chance to get rid of
your husband if you want." Now, said jokingly,
but it was an icebreaker
00:19:55
to put everybody
at their ease. With the Sutcliffes, there was no reaction
whatsoever,
00:20:02
which I found strange 'cause at least
you'd get a smirk or a laugh. He was quite an attractive man,
you know, well-groomed,
00:20:10
but had no personality, no charisma about him
whatsoever, no aura. There was nothing there.
00:20:17
-Laptew felt so uneasy about
his encounter with Sutcliffe, he submitted a report
to his senior officers
00:20:23
suggesting Sutcliffe needed
to be investigated further. Laptew was within
striking distance
00:20:29
of the force's most wanted. -I had the report typed up,
and I says, "I've interviewed
this fellow.
00:20:36
I don't like him." I says, "I've got a really
bad feeling about this. It's an itch
that I can't scratch."
00:20:42
Anything to do with the case
was attached to the report, and I went directly
to Dick Holland
00:20:48
in the incident room. -He put in a report
to his senior officers that Peter was a person
who should be of interest,
00:20:58
someone who should be
looked at closely, and one of the key things
that Mr. Laptew noticed
00:21:05
was that Peter had a gap
in his two front teeth, and this, he felt,
could mark up, or marry up,
00:21:14
with bite marks
found on two of the victims. -He asked me
if it was a Geordie. I says, "No, he's from Bradford.
He's from around these parts."
00:21:22
I says, "but it's a dead ringer for the Marilyn Moore
photo-fit," and then he hit the roof.
00:21:29
"If anybody mentions
effing photo-fits to me, they'll be doing traffic
for the rest of their service."
00:21:34
It wasn't so bad that
I had the report rejected. It was the manner
of the rejection
00:21:40
in front of about 50 people, so I could have crawled
into the crack in the door after that tirade,
00:21:47
but you've got to remember,
these fellows were like gods. That's how much in high esteem
we held them.
00:21:53
-The senior detectives on the
Ripper case were so convinced that the killer was
the mysterious Wearside Jack
00:22:00
that they dismissed
any other suspects. It was a mistake that would soon
lead to the deaths
00:22:06
of three more women
across West Yorkshire. -Police threw all their eggs
into one basket
00:22:16
and discounted a lot of others and spent many, many man hours,
days, weeks trying to track down
Wearside Jack,
00:22:24
and that threw the whole
investigation into kilter. It really did derail it. -He'd had many escapes --
Peter Sutcliffe --
00:22:33
during the investigation. He was interviewed
a total of nine occasions. He lied his way out
on every occasion,
00:22:40
and he was a very good liar. He always had quite
a clever excuse as to why he had been somewhere.
00:22:46
He had the perfect alibi because he was
a long-distance lorry driver, so he had a perfect excuse
to be in different places
00:22:54
at odd times
of the day or night. -I think Peter Sutcliffe
was rather amused by what was going on
in terms of the manhunt for him.
00:23:04
He'd been questioned
by the police several times. He was right under their nose
on multiple occasions,
00:23:10
and even Peter Sutcliffe himself
has said, "I got to the point where
I thought I must be invisible."
00:23:16
So he got to a stage
where he felt untouchable. He felt so powerful. He thought that he was never
going to get caught.
00:23:24
-As the police were trying
to trace Wearside Jack, Peter then
started killing again,
00:23:29
and in September 1979, he attacked a young
Bradford University student called Barbara Leach.
00:23:37
-20-year-old Barbara
was found murdered on September the 2nd, 1979,
in Back Ashgrove, Bradford,
00:23:44
only 200 yards from where
she said goodbye to her friends after a night out. The women of West Yorkshire
00:23:50
and the surrounding area
were living in fear. Prostitutes
were particularly in danger.
00:23:56
8 of the 11 victims
had been working on the streets. -They were all
very, very frightened.
00:24:03
They needed to keep working,
but there was always this fear that the next man,
the next client,
00:24:09
could be the Yorkshire Ripper. -He created fear and terror on the streets of West Yorkshire
and Lancashire.
00:24:16
He was somebody
who was striking at night. Nobody knew
where he'd strike next. He was absolutely terrifying
for people.
00:24:25
-The mood
across the U.K. as a whole was stifled and tense, awaiting the next move
from the man the public knew
00:24:32
only as the Ripper. -We'd never had
anything like it. The media coverage
was overwhelming about it,
00:24:40
so wherever you were, there was always something
about the case -- that a million pounds
worth of publicity,
00:24:49
with the hoaxer's handwriting
on billboards, rewards were offered. It was a massive, massively
intensive campaign, really,
00:24:59
both from a police point of view
and a media point of view, and it saturated
your whole life.
00:25:07
-The problem for the police was the days of
before computers, and police, in those days,
00:25:13
would log information
on index cards. Because of the notoriety of
the attacks and the publicity,
00:25:24
the police were inundated
with information. The had boxes and boxes
and boxes full of index cards,
00:25:33
which filled an enormous room in West Yorkshire
Police Headquarters. -There's been undue criticism
of the police
00:25:42
who made every move
with the best intention with the information
that they had. You cannot sort of anticipate
00:25:49
what a murderer
is gonna do at random. All the stops were pulled out
because all the police wanted
00:25:56
from the top to the bottom
was for this man to be captured so we could get back
to normal, everyday policing.
00:26:02
-For almost a year,
there were no more attacks until the body of 47-year-old
civil servant Marguerite Walls
00:26:08
was discovered in Leeds
on the 20th of August, 1980. She'd been hit
on the back of the head,
00:26:13
and in a change to
the usual method of the Ripper, she had also been strangled. -Ligature strangulation marks
are often very characteristic.
00:26:22
The ligature
will compress the neck. It will often graze it
just a little bit, and when the person dies,
00:26:30
that area of the ligature mark will go quite yellow,
quite hard, and it's usually
very characteristic --
00:26:37
something that will be
identified very quickly. -Now, why he changed
his modus operandi,
00:26:44
nobody seems to know. -Marguerite Walls was
Sutcliffe's 12th victim, but police were still
no nearer to catching him.
00:26:52
A month later,
in September 1980, 20-year-old student Mo Lea moved from Liverpool to Leeds
to complete her degree.
00:27:00
She immediately felt the change
in atmosphere, having arrived in
the Ripper's home county.
00:27:06
-So in 1980, I'd just completed
a foundation degree in art and design
from Liverpool,
00:27:13
so I ended up going to Leeds
to do a fine-art degree, but there was
a strange atmosphere there.
00:27:20
The streets became
quieter and quieter because on the horizon
was this monster called the Yorkshire Ripper.
00:27:29
There'd be another murder,
and it'd be closer to home, and we began to realize that,
as women going out alone,
00:27:35
we were pretty vulnerable. -Despite the continued rise
in fear across the county,
00:27:40
Mo and her friends felt
an increased sense of unity against the unknown assailant.
00:27:46
-There was a curfew almost
on women going out alone. There was that solidarity
amongst the women
00:27:52
and female friends,
and the blokes, as well, that they'd make sure
that they would walk you home.
00:27:57
-Mo and her fellow students
were an independent group who tried as hard as they could
to be unaffected
00:28:03
by the events around them. But this would all change
on October the 25th, 1980. -I had planned to go into
the town center of Leeds
00:28:12
to meet a group of friends
from art school, and I left that pub. I think it was about
quarter to 10:00, 10:00.
00:28:19
My friends were saying,
"Oh, we'll walk you into town," and, "Are you gonna be
all right?"
00:28:23
And I --
"For goodness sake," you know, "I'm absolutely fine.
It's not far." I got to the outskirts
of the campus,
00:28:30
and there's a church, and you can either
take the long way around or you can go
through a shortcut street.
00:28:37
I made a decision that
it would be much easier for me to go through that shortcut
and get into town
00:28:43
so I could get home safely. -But Mo was not alone. -It was fairly dark,
and as I was halfway through,
00:28:50
I heard this voice
calling to me. So I stopped,
and I turn 'round, and I walk towards this figure,
00:28:57
and it was a young man. I thought,
"Maybe I do know him." He was so friendly, so friendly.
00:29:03
-But Mo was wrong. He was not a friend
or even a kindly stranger. -So I realized
I didn't know this chap,
00:29:11
and then I realized
I was in danger. I just sensed this, and as soon as I started
to run really quickly,
00:29:19
his footsteps were behind me getting quicker and quicker
and quicker, and the fear --
my knees turned to jelly.
00:29:28
And all I remember
was getting this massive whack on the top of my head, and I saw the ground
come up towards me,
00:29:35
and that was all
that I remember. But it was real fear -- like, nightmare,
deep, deep fear.
00:29:43
I've never been frightened
before like that ever or since. -Fortunately,
Mo's attacker was disturbed
00:29:50
when a group of students
approached after hearing her screams. The next thing Mo knew,
she was waking up in hospital.
00:29:57
-I was pretty lucky. I think my bones
are pretty strong, so the blow
to the top of the head
00:30:03
has left quite a large dent
and crack in my skull. I had two puncture wounds
to the back of my --
00:30:10
top of my neck,
just below my skull, and cuts and bruises
on my knees and elbows
00:30:17
where I'd fallen
to the floor. -The police could not be sure
the attack on Mo Lea
00:30:22
was carried out by the Ripper, but they wouldn't
have to wait long before he claimed
his 13th victim.
00:30:28
On the 17th of November, 1980,
in Leeds, Jacqueline Hill,
a 20-year-old student,
00:30:35
was hit over the head, stabbed repeatedly,
and mutilated -- an attack that bore
all the hallmarks of the Ripper.
00:30:42
But Jacqueline Hill would be
Peter Sutcliffe's final victim. Within two months,
a routine police stop would lead
00:30:50
to one of the most sensational
arrests of modern times -- the capture
of the Yorkshire Ripper.
00:30:58
-Just after New Year
on January 2nd, 1981, Peter went to Sheffield
and picked up a prostitute.
00:31:04
On the same evening, a policeman
with a lot of years of service decided to show a young rookie
around Sheffield.
00:31:14
-The two police officers
spotted Sutcliffe's car near offices
on Melbourne Avenue
00:31:20
in Sheffield's
red-light district. They decided to approach
and talk to the pair.
00:31:25
-The cops asked,
"What's your girlfriend's name?" He said, "I don't know.
We've only just met."
00:31:31
And the policeman said,
you know, "I haven't just fallen off
a Christmas tree," so he already realized there
was something odd going on.
00:31:42
-Peter said that
he needed to urinate, and the officers let him
go up to a wall by the side of the building.
00:31:49
While he was away,
the young police officer did a PNC check on
the registration of the car
00:31:56
and found that
the plates were false, so Peter was arrested and taken
to Dewsbury Police Station.
00:32:03
-Once down at the station,
Sutcliffe was searched. He wasn't carrying any weapons,
but this time detectives
00:32:09
weren't going to let him
slip from their grasp. -So one of them thought,
"Let's go back to that place
00:32:15
where we spotted him, and let's see
if he did leave anything when he popped out of the car
00:32:20
saying he was going
to have a pee." -The police returned to the
scene of the original arrest.
00:32:25
-They found the hammer --
the intended murder weapon -- and they came back with them.
00:32:30
And gradually after that, Peter Sutcliffe realized
that the game was up, and eventually he confessed,
00:32:37
and his only condition was that he be allowed
to tell his wife, Sonia, before it became known
to the general public
00:32:46
that he was indeed
the Yorkshire Ripper. -It had been over five years since the murder
of Wilma McCann,
00:32:53
but detectives finally
had the Ripper in custody. All the years of terror
for women in West Yorkshire,
00:32:59
all the years of frustration
for the police, had come to an abrupt end. Andrew Laptew had suspected
Sutcliffe may be the Ripper
00:33:07
for the previous two years. He vividly remembers the moment a fellow officer
told him the incredible news.
00:33:14
-She came in and says, "They've
caught the Yorkshire Ripper." I says, "What? Really?
Who was it?"
00:33:20
And she said, "Somebody called
Peter Sutcliffe." Well, it was like
somebody punching me
00:33:24
in the chest
from the inside. The bottom had fallen out
of my world. -Sutcliffe's arrest made
headlines across the country.
00:33:33
-He is being questioned in relation to
the Yorkshire Ripper murders. We are absolutely delighted
with developments at this stage.
00:33:45
-When Peter was caught,
the press was all over it. At the time, it was probably
one of the biggest stories
00:33:53
since the Moors murders. The capture of Peter
was front-page headlines and on top of the news for days,
00:34:02
not only in Britain,
but around the world. -His arrest was greeted
with enormous relief.
00:34:09
For six years,
this man had terrorized a large portion of the country. The relief that the man
behind these horrible offenses
00:34:19
had finally been caught
and was behind bars was immense, and that shadow
that he cast over the country
00:34:29
for those number of years
passed. -I think when
he was finally apprehended, he would have felt a sense of
resignation that this was over,
00:34:37
that he wouldn't be able
to commit any more murders, but I think he probably would've
been a bit shocked, as well,
00:34:42
'cause he'd been getting away
with it for so long, that he thought
he'd just be able
00:34:46
to talk his way out of it again. -A wave of relief
spread across the country, but the announcement
came as a shock
00:34:53
to the family members
of those killed. -I'd seen on the telly
when he got caught,
00:34:59
and at first,
I couldn't believe it. When I started listening to it
properly and realizing,
00:35:06
then I got confirmation
all over the place. A bit of a relief
to see that he had been caught.
00:35:11
People felt a bit safer. -Another viewer intently
watching the story unfold was Mo Lea.
00:35:18
-I was at home in Liverpool, and his face appeared
on the TV news. It was when he was actually
taken from a prison van
00:35:26
into a courts, and there was really
a good camera shot, and I recognized his face
and his eyes.
00:35:35
I actually fell to my knees. I was alone at home.
It was the 6:00 news. I thought,
"That's the man I chatted to."
00:35:41
Then I was really horrified because it dawned on me
that he had attacked me, so that was my first
real understanding that,
00:35:51
for sure,
it was Peter Sutcliffe. -On the 5th of January, 1981,
at Dewsbury Magistrate's Court,
00:35:59
Sutcliffe was remanded
in custody for the murder
of Jacqueline Hill. Later, on the 20th of February,
00:36:05
he was charged
with all 13 murders and a further 7
attempted murders. -Once he'd been charged,
I think Peter Sutcliffe felt
00:36:14
that he had a chance
of not going to prison but of claiming to be mad and, therefore,
going to a secure hospital
00:36:22
where life would be
much easier for him, and so he emphasized the fact
that he believed
00:36:28
God had instructed him
to clear the streets and that it had been
the devil -- a devilish urge had made him
carry these things out.
00:36:38
-The preliminary hearing began
on the 29th of April, 1981, at the Old Bailey in London.
00:36:44
Sutcliffe pleaded not guilty
to murder, but guilty to manslaughter on the grounds
of diminished responsibility.
00:36:52
-The trial judge
at that particular hearing heard evidence
from four psychiatrists --
00:36:56
two for the prosecution
and two for the defense. -The judge stepped in and said,
"We need to be careful here
00:37:03
because whilst I don't disagree
with these psychiatrists, they're only going on what
Peter Sutcliffe has told them,
00:37:09
so we need to be very careful about accepting the word
of a multiple murderer." -Mr. Justice Boreham decided
at the end of it
00:37:18
that Peter should stand trial
in front of a jury on the charges of murder
and attempted murder,
00:37:24
and that's what happened. -The trial began
on May the 5th, 1981. -The crowds had waited
for hours,
00:37:30
some through the night, to watch Peter Sutcliffe
arrive from Brixton in a green prison van.
00:37:36
-The 14-day trial
was essentially a discussion about whether
Peter Sutcliffe was,
00:37:41
as judge Mr. Justice Boreham
put it, "bad or mad." On May the 22nd, the jury
had reached their decision.
00:37:49
-As each of the 13 women's names
was read out, the answer was the same -- by majority of 10 to 2,
guilty of murder on all charges.
00:37:57
-This seals the end
of the largest murder inquiry in the history
of the British police,
00:38:03
and we brought it
to a satisfactory conclusion. -I think when you look at Peter Sutcliffe's
offending behavior,
00:38:08
he's somebody who's very much
in control of what he's doing. Yes, his crimes are
quite bloody, quite gory.
00:38:16
They're incredibly violent. But he escapes.
He gets away with it. He picks up again
where he left off.
00:38:24
He goes prepared
to the crime scene. So he's somebody who knows
what he's doing.
00:38:30
He knows what he's doing
is wrong, and yet,
he's still continuing to do it. -On the 22nd of May, 1981,
00:38:39
Mr. Justice Boreham
sentenced Peter Sutcliffe to 20 life sentences and a minimum of
30 years imprisonment
00:38:46
before being considered
for parole. He was immediately sent to Parkhurst Prison
on the Isle of Wight.
00:38:53
Despite being declared sane
at his trial, in 1984, Sutcliffe was diagnosed
with paranoid schizophrenia
00:38:59
and transferred
to Broadmoor Secure Hospital in Berkshire. -There's a real difference
between prison
00:39:05
and secure hospital, so prison is a place
for prisoners, for offenders. Secure hospitals are a place
00:39:11
for people who are ill
who need treatment. A lot of people speculate that
his paranoid schizophrenia
00:39:18
was something that
actually developed in prison. He was somebody who was
vulnerable to this anyway,
00:39:24
but because of the stress of the circumstances
of being in prison, it triggered
the symptoms in him.
00:39:32
-In 2010, a High Court judge
ruled that Sutcliffe's sentence should be increased
to a whole-life tariff,
00:39:38
meaning he'll never be released
from prison. And in 2016, Sutcliffe was moved
out of Broadmoor
00:39:44
and back into prison
at Frankland in County Durham. He is, without doubt, one of the most
infamous murderers in the U.K.
00:39:53
-Britain is not a country
which has a reputation for serial killers. I think that's why it grabbed
the public's attention
00:40:01
to the degree that it did. -30 years after
Peter Sutcliffe's killing spree, the world is very different --
very, very different.
00:40:11
You don't see people
walking about in the way that they did
30, 40 years ago. Nowadays,
everybody's very cautious.
00:40:19
Everybody's worried. -I think Peter Sutcliffe
has become this kind of iconic figure,
this kind of criminal celebrity,
00:40:26
and I think we need to be
a bit cautious about that. We're gonna lose sight
of the victims --
00:40:31
the people whose lives were lost
in his killing spree. It's become more about him
than it has about them now.
00:40:38
-Sutcliffe's legacy casts
a deathly shadow over the lives he took
and the lives he left behind.
00:40:44
-Peter Sutcliffe is never far
from the headlines, you know? Barely a few months go past
00:40:49
without some mention of him
in a national newspaper, and he is a notorious figure.
00:40:54
-In the years since
his conviction, Sutcliffe has admitted
carrying out a collection
of other attacks on women,
00:41:00
including two back in 1975
before his first murder -- Anna Rogulskyj and Olive Smelt.
00:41:07
He's never admitted
to the attack on Mo Lea. -Would it make any difference if Peter Sutcliffe confessed
that he had attacked me?
00:41:18
It just seems so, so unlikely. I've had to learn
to live with the fact that that will never happen.
00:41:25
-I just wish she were here 'cause I had some
good, happy times with my mum. I just wish she were here.
00:41:34
It breaks my heart knowing my son and my grandson
don't see her. -Since his incarceration
over 35 years ago,
00:41:43
Sutcliffe has talked many times
about his killing spree, regularly taking the opportunity
to seize the limelight,
00:41:50
but he's still yet to give
a reason for the brutal attacks. -Peter, in my opinion,
was a ruthless,
00:41:57
coldhearted killer who actually enjoyed
going out and killing. He got a thrill.
He got a buzz.
00:42:05
Why he did it, only he knows. He's never actually
given a proper explanation. He's never given a cogent reason
00:42:16
for killing
in the manner that he did. -We may never know
how many people Sutcliffe attacked
or why he did it,
00:42:23
but we can be sure no woman
who crossed his path was safe. His reign of terror
shocked the world
00:42:30
as he evaded capture
for over five years. The cold-blooded
and brutal manner in which he murdered
13 helpless women
00:42:38
is why the name Peter Sutcliffe,
the Yorkshire Ripper, continues to haunt
the British public to this day.
00:42:45
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪