True Crime All The Time - Peter Sutcliffe "The Yorkshire Ripper"

Episode Date: August 13, 2017

We are heading over to England to discuss one of their more notorious serial killers. Peter Sutcliffe terrorized Yorkshire in the late 1970s/early 1980s and was dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper by the press. Over a 5 year period, Sutcliffe would murder 13 women and attempt to kill another 7. Police believe that he could be responsible for many more attacks.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the dastardly acts committed by Peter Sutcliffe. His MO involved a combination of hammers, knives, and screwdrivers. One fascinating aspect of this case is how it was handled by the police. They would come under incredible scrutiny for a series of bad decision that would allow Sutcliffe to continue to kill many more women.Visit truecrimeallthetime.com for the show's contact and merchandise information.You can help support the show by going to patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeAn Emash Digital ProductionSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to episode 40 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson, Gibby, Gibby, Gibb, the Gibman. Gibster. Gibster. I like that one too. Gibberrama. How you doing today, buddy? I'm doing good.

It's a great day. Well, it's definitely nice out. That's for sure. Yeah. But it's a really cool day because we're going traveling. We are going traveling. Yeah. We're going overseas.

We're going to England. Big Ben, Parliament. Yeah, hang out with some blokes. Can't get left. I don't know what that means. It's from European vacation. Oh. Big Ben. Big Ben.

Gotcha. Stay up with me. I'm sorry. All right, Gibbs. Let's get to our Patreon shoutouts. We have Danielle Longamore, Prash Gendron. And I hope I'm not butchering that too bad prash or Prosh. Jessica V.

B. Buffy Brown. I like that. BB. B.B. Terry Sweetnam. Haley Porter. And then I pulled one out of the archives, Gives, our new tradition. And I want to give a special recognition to Sarah Brower, been with us a long time.

She has. She's a trooper. She is a trooper. She's actually next in line to do the hometown listener episode. And we've been talking about it forever. But you and I have just been so busy. We haven't been able to get back to it. So we're going to make that a priority, Sarah.

we'll reach out to you about it. Gibbs, I got a couple of announcements. The first one I've talked about a little bit, and that's a new podcast called Criminology. The first episode is out right now. It dropped last night, Saturday night. That's one difference between our podcast, right? We always drop on Sunday night. Right.

And we do have some people that say, hey, would love to have the podcast for Sunday during the day when I'm doing this or I'm doing that, washing the car, whatever I'm doing. So criminology drops Saturday nights and it's all about the infamous case of the Zodiac. And we're going deep, man. I mean, it's going to be, you know, eight, maybe 10 episodes on this case, on this one case. It's Mike Morford. Yeah. Is my co-host for this one. And then the second one that I haven't talked about is a new podcast called Sex, Love, and Murder. And this is one that I'm collaborating with Aphrodite Jones on. Big name. Yeah, big name. Pretty exciting. The introduction is out now and the first episode will be out next Saturday.

So the thought is sex, love and murder, you know, we're going to do some different types of cases, maybe a little less serial killer bent and a little more on people that know each other, more intimate type killings, I guess. Sex and love. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's basically what it boils down to. So check out both of those. They're out now.

You can subscribe on iTunes or your favorite Android app. And then last gives, I want to give a big thanks to Maggie for her help in researching and writing of this episode. You know, she was a big help. Added a lot to this one. And then we do have some voicemails that will play at the end. And then make sure you check out True Crime All the Time Unsolved. This week is about the highway of tears. Big case, British Columbia, we're talking about Gibbs, what, as many as 40 women.

Yeah. That have gone missing along this stretch in the last 40, 50 years. Yeah, exactly. It's one of those that keeps going because there have recently been people that have gone missing. Right. And so it's not like this is a case that just stops in 1979. Yeah, this is like the Canadian. Being killing fields.

Yeah, it just, it keeps going. And it's tragic, it's sad, it's all of that. But it has to be told. So we're traveling on that one as well. Yep. So we're traveling a lot this week. But let's head over to England, man. You ready?

Yeah. Do we take the Titanic? I don't think we should. That was the other direction, by the way, yeah. Yeah, it was. That wouldn't be my first choice. Yeah. So we're discussing one of England's most notorious serial killers.

Peter Sutcliffe terrorized Yorkshire in the late 70s, early 80s, and he would end up being dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper by the press. And over a five-year period, Sutcliffe would murder 13 women. He would attempt to kill seven more, at least, because police believe that he's probably responsible for many more attacks. They don't know how many more murders, but they think there are a lot of attacks that went unsolved that are probably the work of Peter Sutcliffe. And this is a very interesting case because the police come under a tremendous amount of scrutiny on this thing for the way that they handle it.

And we're going to look at all of this. We're going to look at the decisions that the police make during the investigation, many of which allow Sutcliffe to slip through their hands. and they're going to go back afterwards and they're going to review this case and they're going to say, oh, we had him. We had him here. And he goes on to kill,

you know, X number more. Yeah. And it's tough. I mean, it's tough for police, I think, when this is all said and done,

when they look back and see, now we're going to give it both sides because we're talking about the 1970s. They had some issues with technology back then to say the least. So this is one of, if not the biggest investigations in the history of England. So we start with early life Gibbs, where we like to. And Peter Sutcliffe was born on June 2nd, 1946 in Bingley.

He grew up in a Catholic working class family. His parents were John and Kathleen Sutcliffe. But there's really not a lot of information about his younger years. Not as much as we would have on a lot of our episodes. Right. I don't know how many times he got hit in the head. I don't know if he had any of the characteristics of the McDonald triad. I don't know what kind of psychological impacts he had. There's just really not that much out there about those type of things. And it's kind of sad because that's something that you and I like to talk about a lot. We do. It gives you a window into maybe why this

person ends up doing what they do. So we don't have some of that that we normally would. What we do know is that Peter Sutcliffe was known to be a loner throughout his school days. And he actually drops out of school at the age of 15. Now, one fact that's definitely going to come into play here is that at a fairly early age, Peter Sutcliffe begins visiting sex workers. And I know, Gibbs, we have a lot of. lot of cases that center around this. And there's going to be, you know, a central theme again to this one. Yeah. I mean, think about that. That has to be one of the most dangerous professions that you can be involved in. Absolutely. Now, we know why people do it. You and I have talked about it before.

Yeah. Whether it's, you know, somebody hits hard times and, you know, that's what they turn to. Yeah, it's easy money. Drug addiction and, and that, they, you know, they. turn to that to feed that habit. There's all kinds of reasons why someone would choose to do that, but just think about how dangerous it is. Oldest profession, dangerous profession. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. You could just go back and listen to some of our episodes that center around killers targeting sex workers, and you're going to see that's a very dangerous profession. Yeah. I think when they're in that profession, because they're trying to support their drug habit, that's when it gets really dangerous because they're willing to do about

anything for pennies on the dollar. That's where they get in trouble. Well, and to your point, they're probably willing to go with people because of that. Yeah. That normally they wouldn't. Absolutely. Because you get to a point where you say, I need X amount of money or I'm not going to be able to get whatever my drug of choice is. Maybe I'm going to look past the obvious signs. of what would normally tip me off, and I'm going to dismiss those because I got to get that money. Yeah, exactly what happens. I mean, again, we're theorizing,

but I think it's a common sense approach. Yeah. And I guess the reason why this is a central theme is there is a theory that police would later come up with, that it was a bad experience that Peter Sutcliffe had during one of these encounters. he was essentially conned out of money by a sex worker, and this may have led to him developing a very strong hatred

for not only them but for all women. Because we're going to see he's not exclusive in his victims. So after leaving school, now remember, he's only 15 years old. He has a series of low-paying jobs. You know, you're 15 years old. You don't have your high school education. You're not going to have a lot of.

options, Gibbs, I don't think, at that point. One of the jobs that he ends up taking, it's kind of very interesting, and it will come into play later, is as a grave digger in the 1960s. Kind of ominous. A little ominous. And I have to imagine in the 60s, and tell me what you think, Gibbs, that was a job that was probably done by hand. Oh, yeah, grab the shovel and get at it. Whereas today they would use a backhoe. Yeah. And they could have used a backhoe. back then, but I really doubt that they would have done that just for graves. Yeah, I have this picture in my

head of him just with a shovel. Just digging the ditch, digging the hole. Digging the hole with a shovel. From November 71 to April 73, Sutcliffe worked at a factory of a television company. Packaging up parts for TVs, he leaves this

job because at some point he's asked to take on a salesman job. And this would have required him to travel extensively. And for whatever reason, Gibbs, he just says, nope, not doing it. And he leaves the company. And he starts working the night shift at another company called the Britannia Works of Anderton. And he would be there until 1975, at which point he got laid off. But when he did, you know, he got some kind of severance package. And he took that money and that time off to get his

license to become a truck driver. And that's what he's really going to do for, you know, the remainder of his time as a free man, we'll call it. So he starts working as a driver for a tire company in September of 75, but is fired the very next March because he was stealing used tires. Stealing used tires. Yeah, I mean, if you're going to steal, can't you get some new ones? New ones, yeah. If you're going to do it, do it right. Go all the way if you're going to take a chance. Step up, dude. So he's unemployed from this time until October of 76 when he gets another job as a truck driver. Now, we have to go back to 67.

And I know I'm backtracking, but I want to talk a little bit about a woman named Sonia Serma. I hope I'm saying that right. Because Peter Sutcliffe meets Sonia back in 67. But they wouldn't get married until August of 1974. So they dated quite a long time, seven years. After they're married, Sonia gets pregnant several times, but each time miscarriages. And doctors are ultimately going to tell her that she's not able to have children. So that's a big blow.

After this, Sonia starts taking classes to become a teacher, and she finishes those up in 77, gets a job. And between her teacher salary and what. Peter is making driving a truck, they end up buying their first house. This house located in Heaton, Bradford, and this is the house that they're going to live in all the way up until the time that Sutcliffe is arrested for his murders. So I know we're jumping around a little bit, Gibbs, with the years and things like that, but I think it's important to set a few things up before we get into the part where Sutcliffe really kind of takes off. Yeah, it makes sense. Set the background. Yeah, a little bit. It's because.

now we have to go back to 1969. And this is when Sutcliffe assaults a sex worker for the first time. And I mentioned it in the very beginning that he had this encounter where he was conned out of money. And the story around

this assault is that he was trying to find this woman that had conned him out of money. And he asked a friend to drive him to Paul's Road in Bradford. He hid until he saw the woman that he thought was the one that had conned him out of the money.

So his friend's waiting for him in the car. Sutcliffe comes back to the car. He's all out of breath. He tells his buddy to take off. Now, does this sound familiar to you? You mean like that time that you asked me to drive you down to the next county? Oh, no. Different story.

I was talking about at the time that I did that for you. Yeah. Well, that's happened by, you know, it goes both ways. We would never do that. We're good, upstanding citizens. And everybody knows it Gibbs. So obviously this buddy of his is a little suspicious, I think, as anyone would be. And he asked Sutcliffe about it, but he won't tell him what happened.

What's later going to come out is that he followed this woman that he thought was the right one into a garage, hit her over the head with a rock that he had put inside of a sock. That sounds like a Dr. Seuss line, but it's not. No, that's a... Because Dr. Seuss would never get that dark. That's a quick hand. handheld weapon. So he's visited by the police the very next day because the woman that he attacked had somehow gotten the license plate off of the car they'd been in. And he quickly admits to

police that, yes, he did attack her. Now, side note, this woman looks nothing like the woman that actually took the money from him. And when I say money gives, I think we're talking about like 10 pounds. Yeah. She didn't steal, you know, thousands. She just conned him out of a, you know, a little bit of money. Yeah, 10 pounds, whatever that is in US dollars. Yeah. I thought you with your currency conversion, $8.58 cents, automatic calculator would just be rattling this stuff off. $8.58. I don't know. But even in the late 60s, are you going to try to murder somebody over that amount of money? What is that today? I mean, let's even say it's a hundred bucks. No, normal people wouldn't. Yeah. Well, Peter Sutcliffe's not normal. We know that. Right. We wouldn't be

talking about him if he was a normal upstanding citizen. I doubt it's even about the money. It's probably more about the principle. Or the shame or the fact that she got over on him. Right. Yeah. I think you're right. I don't think it's about the money.

It's more probably psychological, bruised ego or something like that. Now, the woman did not press charges against Sutcliffe. Pretty lucky guy. No, I mean, so he was lucky in that sense, but she was a sex worker. Well, there you go. So she didn't want to get more involved than she needed to. Yeah, she didn't want to open up anything where probably the police would come back on her. So he got off. Now, what's interesting is that he doesn't do anything else until 1975. That we know about?

That we know about or that he's admitted to because he has admitted to a lot of things. But that's a six-year period. And in our world, Gibbs, with the people that we talk about, you know, Outside of Dennis Raider, who took an abnormally long layoff period, six years is a long time for this type of person to lay dormant. But in July of 1975, he attacked a woman named Anna Rojulski, and I hope I'm even close on that last name, Gibbs. Anna was walking by herself and Sutcliffe attacked her with a hammer, and then he cut her stomach open with a knife. This is brutal, man. Well, and this is something that you and I are going to have to talk about because Peter Sutcliffe has a very, very regimented MO. He likes hammers.

And I don't know if we've done anybody that exclusively used hammers. It's just so. Well, it's very personal in a way because you and I talk about stabbing or strangulation, right? Very personal up close. A hammer is the same way. I mean, the instrument is connected to you. Yeah. It's not like shooting somebody from, you know, whatever, 30 yards away.

Yeah, I mean, it's even worse than a knife. I would think there is a case to be made for that. Yeah. Because just imagine being hit in the head repeatedly with a ball peen hammer. I mean, it'll make you cringe to think about what that must be like. I'm just saying that's a lot of anger to have to use that as a weapon. you're taking enjoyment in what you're going to do with it. There has to be a factor there.

Yeah. Because there's easier implements to use, right? We know that. And he's also going to be doing a lot of stabbing and cutting, so he could have just done that. Yeah. There's something to the hammer. There really is.

But Sutcliffe is startled by someone as this attack is happening. And so he ends up running away. And because of him being interrupted, Anna survives. Now, she requires a lot of medical treatment. And then you think about the trauma that she had to endure after this attack. Because you know the trauma is, would have to be unbelievable. Oh, man, you couldn't walk down the street. Trust anybody. No. It's great that she survived, but you have to think about the survivors and what they go through probably for the rest of their lives. Yeah, I don't think this is anything she ever forgets about it. I don't think you ever would. I think it would.

I think it would be with you every day of your life. Yeah. Definitely every time you left the house, you might still think about sitting on your couch with all the doors locked. Yeah, I'm sure you're always wondering if your footsteps, you know. In August of 75, he attacks a woman named Olive Smelt in Halifax. And again, we're going to be saying this a lot, basically the same type of attack.

Hammer blows to the head. And this one, he used the knife in her lower back, stabbing her. and also he was interrupted. So all have survived this attack as well. Clearly he's not good with a knife, but, I mean, thankfully for these last two victims, because of that, they survived. So I don't know how much of it is that

and how much of it is where he's choosing to commit these attacks because he keeps getting interrupted. Yeah, another bad judgment, which again, good for the victims. But you and I see that a lot, right? Early crimes where, let's say, a killer is kind of working things out, we'll call it. Right. Honing their craft.

I hate to say that, but it is essentially what they're doing. You know, you're correct. I mean, it's just like you and I starting the podcast. Yeah. You know, those first few episodes were rough. Yeah, still working through things. And we're still working through things. Yeah.

But we're doing it without causing any harm to anybody, hopefully. Yeah, there's that one person out there that's like, and we're not breaking any laws. So we got that going for us. Yeah, we are legit. So again, you have the aftermath that Olive had to deal with, and Sutcliffe doesn't wait much time. In the same month, towards the end of August, he attacks a 14-year-old girl named Tracy Brown. He attacks her from behind, hits her on the head five times with his hammer. I realized that there were prostitutes and they'd been looking at Shiljolzden and had gone on to Brantford to fly their trade, you know?

Anyway, that's the reason I went to Shilson later on. to see if I could find any of them because it was getting a bit hot on them. There were police everywhere and all over Leeds and that, you know. So I went on there to see if I could see them to bump one of them off because I was on the mission at the time. And I saw this Tracy Down. She didn't look at 15, she looked about 19 or 20, you know. She was walking slowly up this lane and I thought,

oh, you know, she's probably one of these prostitutes. Because I didn't in my mind that there were, the children must be full of cross. You, anyway. I hit with a branch or something, didn't really injure her. I threw her over a wall. And I climbed over the wall and I was thinking of bumping her off and this voice said, stop, stop. It's a mistake.

She never told the police what I said to her then, you know. I said, oh, I'm sorry, you'll be all right. I'm going now. I'm not coming back. I'm going now. You'll be okay. So I got over the wall, back onto the road and go down to my car. then a car came up the road and I saw it stop at the top of the road so she must have climbed over the wall and they took her home you know she can't have been seriously injured because she would have still been behind the wall you know that's why the car stopped because she climbed over the wall and

and thumbed it down or stopped in front of it you know anyway that was the reason why uh told of albert amand was me can prove it and all that you know All right. So Gibbs, that's the real Peter Sutcliffe. Yeah. An interview later on, probably from jail. And it, you know, it pisses me off when I want to play these clips, but I get pissed. Yeah. Because at one point, this son of a bitch is laughing. He is.

As he's recounting how he attacked this young girl, so that upsets me. And then everybody has to hear the whole tone of his conversation is about. Well, I didn't really hurt her. Yeah, it wasn't as big as a deal as everybody's making it out of me. She got up and climbed over some wall and stopped a car, so she's okay. And then the point about, well, I told her I'm not, I wasn't going to come back. Yeah. Well, you already hit her in the head five times.

She's going to trust you. It's just there's something there. Yeah, what a dick. Yeah, no, that's, there's no other word probably, spotted. And it's not even spotted, right? Just plain old dick. Yep. There's something about these types of conversations that just really torques me off because you can hear it in Sutcliffe's voice that he doesn't believe what he did, like you said, was that big a deal.

Now, let's not forget that by the time he did this interview, he's already murdered 13 people. You know, we set it up front and attacked a whole bunch of other ones. Tracy Brown survives. But because of that, does that make it okay? And that's just the feeling I get from him that, like you said, not that big a deal because, hey, she didn't die. Yeah. And then you also had the feeling was if she was a sex worker, he would have continued on. I mean, the only reason he stopped was that he kind of realized that that's not what she was.

Otherwise, he would have kept on going. But not like with remorse. It sounds like he would have been happy to complete the job. Oh, I don't think this guy has any remorse in his entire body. So up to this point, Sutcliffe has attacked a number of women. They've all survived, but that's going to change on October 30th, 1975. He attacks a woman named Wilma McCann, and Wilma was a mother of four children. She was from Leeds.

Sutcliffe struck her twice with a hammer, and then he stabbed her 15 times in the neck, in the chest and stomach. Police found traces of semen at the crime scene on some of her clothing. But despite, you know, putting in a lot of effort to solve this case, nothing came out of it. The second murder occurs in January of 76. Sutcliffe stabs a woman named Emily Jackson 51 times. That's nuts. That is a lot of rage.

Yeah, that's just, wow. What else could it be? You don't need to stab someone 51 times. to end their life. And not only that, he again used a hammer, hit her on the head repeatedly. And when I say stabbed, she wasn't stabbed with a knife. She was stabbed with a screwdriver. That's just the rage that somebody has to have to stab somebody with a screwdriver.

Now, Emily Jackson had fallen on some hard times. And this kind of goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning, Gibbs. She was having major financial issues. She was having trouble taking care of. her family and she was using the family van to drive around and find people that were willing to pay her to have sex for money. No matter where you are on that, right or wrong, doesn't give anybody right to take somebody's life because that's the profession they choose. I love the fact that you're saying that because we do talk about a lot of cases that involve sex workers. I think that

statement is very important because the fact that someone chooses to engage in that type of lifestyle, now granted, it's illegal, but it doesn't mean that their murder should be looked at as okay. And that's my fear, Gibbs. And a lot of these cases that we do, it seems like it is. Yeah, I think it kind of gets brushed over a little bit sometimes. Right. But not only by the police, I think sometimes, but also the public. There's not a big outcry when these people are murdered.

And the reason I say that is because later on, we're going to see, like I said, he doesn't just target sex workers. But when somebody is killed, that is what everybody considers to be an upstanding member of society, I mean, people hit the streets all of a sudden. Just because they're a sex worker. I mean, that's still somebody's daughter, sister, right? Life and some. Yeah.

I mean, come on. They're still a human. And to back that up, Gibbs, about Emily Jackson, her family and some of her neighbors, they would be shocked after the murder to find out that she had been doing that. Now, police did find a very important clue at this murder scene in the form of a boot print

on one of Emily Jackson's legs. They would be able to determine that the boot print was a size 7, so now police have a second murder investigation, going on and at this point already the local papers are dubbing this killer Jack the Ripper. Now Jack the Ripper is pretty famous. Big time. Not sure why they would jump so quickly to be calling this person Jack the Ripper, but...

That's the media. The media, they're sensationalizing it. We know later on he's going to be known as the Yorkshire Ripper. On examination of the injuries at first, no clear pattern emerged. Subsequently, of course, it became obvious that a pattern was emerging of two or three heavy blows, usually to the back of the head, curved laceration through the skin, round depressed fracture underneath it, would produce quite severe brain damage, immediate unconsciousness, and death will occur fairly shortly afterwards. And so the hammer rapidly became a trademark. So I think they figure this out pretty early, right? It's not too hard probably to link these two murders.

You've got two people that were hit with hammers in a very similar manner and then staff. In May of 76, Sutcliffe assaults a woman named Marcella Claxton. And she accepted a ride from him after leaving a party. She thought he was going to take her home, but he takes her to a park instead. and he would hit her over the head with the hammer a number of times. But this is another instance where somebody got away from Peter Sutcliffe because Marcella does not die. She lives. She would actually end up testifying later on against Sutcliffe at trial.

I mean, good for her. I just, man, you imagine just getting arrived from somebody that stopped and thought they were nice? And you realize that they're not turning where they need to turn. and then your anxiety builds up and then they pull into a park and man i can't imagine what you're thinking next thing you know they reach for a hammer and start just dude i have a hard time putting myself in the shoes of these women and trying to imagine what some of this would be like i just don't know that i can do it i can try it i can think about it but until you would be in that position and experience it i don't think anybody can know the true fear that you would be

feeling. Now, one of the really sad parts of this incident with Marcella Claxton was that she was four months pregnant. And after the attack, she would end up losing the baby. So as police are investigating, one of the first things that they do is they start to develop a motive for these attacks and for these killings. And the thought is the killer has a hatred of women who engage in sex for money. Now, they're probably not all the way wrong on that, but what this does is it leads to the police really only focusing on incidents involving these type of victims. And so there are attacks on other women with very similar characteristics that they end up discounting as being committed by the same killer. And Marcella Claxton is a great example of this, because

she wasn't a sex worker. And so when she gives a description of her attacker, they don't really take much notice of it or even think about trying to tie it in with the murders. And this is just the first in a series of missteps by the police, Gibbs. We're going to talk about a lot of them because there's going to be a lot of bad decisions made in this case. And I hate to say it, but some of these may have resulted in more people dying. than what should have.

Yeah. And I really, I don't like to harp on the police. I really don't. They have a very tough job. Yeah, I know that. But we're going to go through the facts

and people can make up their own opinion of, you know, what happened, should they have done this, should they not have. But they're criticized after this fact. There's no doubt about that. The police are heavily criticized for how they handled all of this.

In February of 1977, Sutcliffe murders a woman by the name of Irene Richardson. Hits her over the head with a hammer, kills her with just the hammer blows. They would later be able to figure this out. And then he stabs her after she was already dead a whole bunch of times. What in the world? I don't know if he didn't know she was already dead. He just wanted to make sure overkill.

Or, and let me ask you this, does he care? Is that part of what he has to do? Right. I have to hit with the hammer. Now, normally that just incapacitates people. Right. And then I stab them. It's like an OCD killer?

I don't know. But Sutcliffe does something a little bit different because he actually positions Irene's body in a very specific, almost provocative way, takes off her boots and I don't know how else to say it, Giz, but he arranges them symmetrically placed against each leg. It's a very strange thing because he hasn't done it before and for whatever reason, he must have felt compelled.

to do this. This was the sort of man who thought about what he had done, planned his attack carefully, and then was concerned to arrange everything about the body, to have the maximum shock impact upon whoever came upon the scene first. So it would be shocking to find, to, I guess to come across any dead body, but was he playing up the shock factor by posing Irene and a suggestive way so somebody was going to stumble upon her. I guess that's what this guy is thinking. He wants that shock factor. Now, police are going to find a huge clue at the scene of this murder. And what they find is a set of tire tracks. And this is going to lead them down a path of trying to match the tracks to the owners of any cars that would match these tire tracks. And they do.

They work hard building up a list of every car and every owner. that could be a possible match to these tire tracks. And as you can imagine, that's a lot of work. They can't just make two or three keystrokes, Gibbs on a computer, and spit out this list in 1970. It has to be a chore, man, back then. Yeah, a lot of manual work was involved in this police investigation, and we're going to talk about it.

But as it relates to the tire tracks, police are going to make another bad decision. and it's going to prove to be a major blunder in this case. It was decided that we hadn't the manpower to run two murder inquiries and a tire inquiry with a diminishing return from the tire inquiry. That was an unfortunate decision because the ripper's car was in fact on the remaining uncompleted list. So when I say major blunder, I mean major blunder.

I mean major blunder because that's one of the lead investigators from back in the day. And again, these guys are haunted by this case because they know that some of the decisions that were made, whether they made them or management at a higher level made it. It did some harm, some big time harm. Absolutely. It did. So you have this list. They abandon it because they just don't have the manpower to work it. And later on, once they know that it's Peter Sutcliffe, they go back and see he was on this list.

And it's not the only list he's going to be on. And I think to me, it's what's so fascinating about this case. I mean, the murders are tragic. They always are. And a lot of times what's fascinating is what kind of childhood somebody led and what led them to commit the murders that they do. In this case, to me, it's more about how the police can. conducted their investigation is what I found very interesting. The Ripper's fourth victim was a sex worker named Tina Atkinson.

She was a 32-year-old mother with three daughters. And Gibbs, that's where we go back to humanizing the victim. This was a real person. 32 years old, she had three daughters at home. So, yes, she was a sex worker, but she was a human being with people that depended on her and cared for her. Yeah, she had her own family. Yeah, there's no doubt about it.

I don't want to harp on it, but I think it's a big deal to point out. Now, Tina had been drinking at a pub the night of her murder, and she ended up accepting a ride home from Peter Sutcliffe. That's not a good thing. We know that. Now, she doesn't know that. She doesn't know who Peter Sutcliffe is at this point.

He drops her off at her house, and as soon as she opens the door, he viciously attacks her. He lands four massive hammer blows to her head, and Tina Atkinson would be found the next day lying in her own bed deceased. But again, the police are going to find a very vital clue. Because on one of the bed sheets, they find a bloody footprint, which they're able to determine is a size 7 Wellington boot.

And they're going to be able to match this up exactly to the print that they found on Emily Jackson's body. What's he doing? Standing on top of the bed? I don't know what this guy is doing. Man. And I may talk about it later at some point, Gibbs, but it's not just hammer blows and stabbing.

On some of the coroner reports, there are indications that it was almost like he was either standing on these people, stomping on these people. I mean, they had injuries consistent with being either stomped on or knelt on. So I don't know if he was doing that as a way of controlling these people, but that does come out on some of the coroner reports that they had massive injuries just even resulting from that.

Sutcliffe would strike again just a few months later. And this time, he would kill a 16-year-old by the name of Jane McDonald, and he leaves her body in a park, in a park, Gibbs. And her body is going to be found by a group of, of children playing in the park. There's a pleasant sight to see. Yeah. So you take your kids to the park.

You're letting them play with other kids. You think, all right, this is pretty good, right? This is what kids should be doing. What they shouldn't be doing is stumbling across a dead body. And again, Jane was only 16 years old. She was not a sex worker. She had been out on the town that night, had been walking home. Sutcliffe struck her over the head.

head and the police were able to figure out that he had actually dragged her body into the park to the place where the children found her. They were also able to determine that after he got her to this spot, he beat her again with the hammer or hit her again with the hammer multiple times, stabbed her repeatedly. Now, I foreshadowed this earlier, but this is one of the murders that hit the public very hard because what it showed was that the Ripper was not only targeting women that engaged with sex for money. This was a 16 year old and it caused a lot of panic. I mean, people were afraid to go out. Sutcliffe's next attack was on a woman named Maureen Long and Maureen loved to dance. She was known around town. She went to ballrooms. Now, when I say

dance, Gibbs. I'm talking about like real dancing. I don't want anybody to get the wrong picture here. Yeah, you're talking. She's like the ballroom dance. Yeah. I should have said it that way. And after she had been dancing the night away, she was ready to go home. Like some of the other women, she accepted a ride from Peter Sutcliffe. And at some point, after getting out of the car, he would hit her on the head repeatedly with the hammer. I feel like I could have just taped that part and just inserted it. Mm-hmm. It's so, you know, that's his ritual. He's not deviating from that.

Common knowledge now with him. And he stabs her all over her body as well. But Maureen survives this attack. And this is kind of amazing. It is amazing. Because when she wakes up, she doesn't remember anything about the attack. The police don't find any clues at the scene.

All I know is I've got a play to me. head and a bit of some of my school missing and stab wounds out at front of my stomach and stabbed in the back. So that's obviously Maureen Long talking about her injuries. But again, Gibbs, you know, what kind of trauma? What was her life like afterwards? Something like this would change your life forever. There's no two ways about that, in my opinion.

Changed hers. I mean, I guess the good thing is that she doesn't recall. And that she survived. And that she survived. And that she was able to recover from her injuries. Now, when I say recover, she still has some. She just mentioned she's missing a part of her skull. Right.

But she's able to, you know, lead a normal life. Sutcliffe's next target is a woman named Gene Jordan. Gene was a 21-year-old mother of two. And Sutcliffe made arrangements with Gene to have sex for money. And as part of this, they drive to an abandoned lot. This is October 1st, 1977, and they have sex. Peter Sutcliffe would give Gene Jordan a brand new five-pound note as part of the transaction.

Versus a old five-pound note? Yeah, and it's critical. It's critical to this case. That's why I said it that way. Because he ends up murdering Gene. And her body is not going to be found for 10 days. But when police do find the body, they're able to determine that her body had been moved some number of days after her death. Now, why the five-pound note is important is because at some point after the murder, Sutcliffe realizes that he didn't get the five-pound note back and he starts to panic.

But he realizes that there had been no news of the police finding the body at this point as he's panicking, as he's realizing what he'd done. So he actually goes back to the body, back to the site where he murdered Gene Jordan and he's trying to find this five pound note. But he can't find it anywhere. But he had also brought along a hacksaw. For whatever reason, Gibbs, I don't know. I don't know why people do what they do. Yeah, I understand him panicking and saying, I got to get this five pound note. Right. Because we're going to talk about why it's so important. But he brings along a hacksaw and he tries to cut her head off. And that's the part I don't get.

I see no reason to do that. Yeah, I don't get it either. I mean, there was no reason to kill her. Don't get me wrong. No, no, no, no. But that's already done and over. But from a murder standpoint, why would you want to create any additional DNA transfer issues, anything, right?

Yeah, I just don't, I guess in my mind, I can't figure out what his thinking process was as to why that was a great idea. Yeah. Well, we know he wasn't wired, right? So there you go. So at one point, there's a passerby that finds a handbag. And they turn the handbag into the police and it ends up being Gene Jordan's handbag. And while police are searching it, they find this brand new five pound note. And why is it important? It's because they try to trace this five pound note. And the fact that it was brand new helped them, right? Because they're able to trace it back to a specific bank, and then from there, they're able to determine that it was part of a payroll package that was

sent out to 34 different businesses. The problem with that is that when they did the numbers, that meant that there were 8,000 people that could have received this one five pound note. Still pretty impressive that you can trace it back to that point. Yeah, so they've narrowed it down to there. Probably not shocking is the fact that included in the list of the 8,000 people was the name Peter Sutcliffe. And he was actually questioned twice by police in just a few weeks after the murder of Gene Jordan. But during the interviews, each time he gave an alibi that was corroborated by his wife. But again, Gibbs, this is one of those things that's going to haunt investigators. Because they interviewed him twice. We know he's on the list

of the tire track, of the possible owning a possible car that matched the tire track. Right. We know he's on the list of the 8,000 people that could have received the 5-pound note, but we're also talking about 1970s and what technology they had at their disposal at that point in time to put all this information together. So Sutcliffe's next attack occurred in December, and it was a woman named Marilyn Moore. She was bludgeoned by a hammer, but her life was saved. when Sutcliffe was interrupted by somebody.

Again, he's obviously picking places to try to commit these murders where other people are coming by. Yeah. Because he's interrupted a number of times. Luckily he is because these people survive. And Marilyn Moore is able to provide a description of her attacker to police.

And from that, they make a composite sketch. If you see it online, it's basically like you just took a picture of Peter Sutcliffe. Wow. It's very eerily similar. And I'm always in awe of these people that do composite sketches. Yeah, we talk about this, right? Yeah.

I couldn't draw a tree. And somehow these people are drawing somebody that they've never seen from a description that somebody else is telling them. Yeah. It amazes me. Yeah, because there's no way I could even describe you to somebody. I keep saying that, right? I couldn't describe. You would just say gorgeous with long flowing lots.

and pearly white teeth. I mean, what else would you say? Who's that? Oh, I don't know. Oh, okay. The other thing that police find at the crime scene is another set of tire tracks that they would be able to determine match the tire tracks

that they found at the Irene Richardson murder scene. Now, a couple of things happened in this investigation. Marilyn Moore gave a description to police of the car that she said her attacker was in. but she would end up getting that wrong. She would also go on to name several men that she thought were her attacker by name. And that would lead police down the wrong path as well. Rabbit holes.

Yeah. Bad rabbit holes. These turned out to be false leads. Now, I mean, obviously, she went through a traumatic experience. You can't expect her to get every single detail right. That would be a lot to ask. In January of 1978, the police make another decision. that in hindsight is going to turn out to be really, really detrimental.

They stopped the search around the five pound note. And they've been doing this research for quite a while. They had narrowed the list down from $8,000 to a much smaller number. I think at some point they get it below $1,000. That's impressive too. Yeah, because that's done by hand, by sheer investigation and talking to people. And that had to have been a lot of work. Now at this point, they have what they're calling the Ripper Squad.

And this is a task force that is searching for the Yorkshire Ripper. And during this time, they come in contact with Peter Sutcliffe. They interview him some more. Or again? Again. But nothing comes out of any of the interviews that they've done to date with Peter Sutcliffe. And we talked about mistakes in this investigation. They happened.

There's really no doubt about it. But like we said, it was the night. 1970s. They didn't have the powerful computers that we have today where every bit of information is compiled in two or three keystrokes. You can do a quick query and retrieve that information. Right. They don't have that. No. But the problem was there wasn't even a single file on Peter Sutcliffe. And this is where they would really get hammered after the fact. All of the information that they had on him and they had quite a bit. Like we said, they've already done at least three or four interviews, I think, at this point. It was all spread out. So you have police interviewing Sutcliffe. They're going to

interview him a total of nine times, nine times, Bueller. But like we said, all the information from each one of these interviews, it's not put in like a jacketed file where somebody could just go through and look at it. Because if somebody could have looked at everything, the interview notes, the composite sketches, witness statements, I think it would have been pretty easy for somebody to see that Peter Sutcliffe should have been a prime suspect. And then you have on top of that the fact that his name is in both of the list that we mentioned, the tire track list and the list around the five pound note. I mean, today Gibbs, give me 30 seconds with two Excel files. I'll be able to cross-reference those very easily.

Yeah, I mean, just these large databases, you know, probably faster than that. But that's some of the stuff that they were up against. Sutcliffe next murdered a woman named Yvonne Pearson, and he would shove her body under an old sofa. What the? Yeah, I guess just the discarded sofa. And because of this, her body is not going to be found for a number of months for quite, for quite, some time because other people that he ends up murdering are actually found before Yvonne. But going in the timeline of when he actually committed the murder, it's Yvonne Pearson.

Now, one thing is strange about this Gibbs is that police determined that a hammer was not used. But what they do say happen is that her skull had been caved in by something. There were no stab wounds. but because of the amount of time that elapsed between the murder and when they found the body, they did have quite a bit of trouble nailing down all of the facts. But this one's interesting to me, Gibbs, because why would he not use a hammer and why would he not stab? Yeah, kind of bizarre. And my thought was this was not planned.

He didn't have his killing tools with him, but he saw an opportunity. And so what he did is he used something. that he found. A large rock. Well, I'll say we know how he feels about taking a rock and putting it in a sock. Yeah. That's the only thing I could think of is that he didn't have his normal kit with him, we'll call it, but the frog demon came out. And he had to do. And when I say he had to, he didn't have to, but in his mind he had to. So he used whatever he had or whatever he saw lying around. That's my theory on it.

I don't know if it holds water, but that's what I was thinking. Now he killed an 18-year-old by the name of Helen Ritka. And Helen Ritka had been reported missing by her twin sister. Both sisters, 18 years old, they were reported to be sex workers. They would find Helen's body three days after she was killed. Again, same M.O. As most of the ones we've talked about. And then the last murder that Sutcliffe would commit in 1978, it's not his last murder, but in

1978 was a woman named Vera Millward and he killed this woman in the parking lot of a hospital. She'd been hit in the head repeatedly with a hammer and then stabbed the whole bunch of times. So very similar. It just seems, I guess what was strange to me about this one was that he chose to do it in the parking lot of a hospital and it goes back to me gives about he picks some strange areas where he wasn't going to be alone. Yeah, he really does pick. I mean, he's bizarre.

There was a lot of opportunity for people to come upon him while he was committing these horrible acts. And I think that's why he got, he had to flee a bunch of times. Or his murder count would actually be a lot higher than it is. The man that was involved in the series had to be a complete sadist. I mean, he was picking victims at random,

didn't matter whether they were innocent girls, prostitutes, or whatever. But the things that he was doing were horrific injuries. You might think in your own mind he was a madman. But then, of course, you looked at the facts and looked what sort of evidence he was leaving behind. And he wasn't a bad man at all. He was a cool, calculating individual that was getting a great thrill in what he was doing, a sexual thrill. And isn't that what it always comes back to a lot of the time? Different manner of killing that we talk about from episode to episode.

But a lot of times we're talking about whatever manner it is, somebody is getting a sexual thrill. Whether it's hitting somebody on the head with a hammer or the act of stabbing with a knife. I have a hard time with that, Gives. I just don't get it. It's hard to fathom. Yeah. I mean, really, I mean, think about it. I mean, I don't know how you get off.

just something like that. I think for people like us with what I would call normal wiring, I don't know how normal, and most people that are listening to this show, they just can't understand how anybody would think that that would be intoxicating or give some type of sexual pleasure. So after this murder in 78 of Vera Millward, Peter Sutcliffe goes dormant for almost a year.

And during this part, his mother dies. But he picks back up again in April of 79 when he kills a woman by the name of Josephine Whitaker. And Josephine was 19 years old. She was not a sex worker. She actually worked at a bank. And at the crime scene, police would find bite marks on Josephine's body. And the bite marks indicated that the killer had a gap in his front teeth. Actually, kind of sizable gap.

Is it shocking to know that Peter Sutcliffe had the same type of large gap between his two front teeth? Probably not that shocking. I mean, there are so many signs pointing to Sutcliffe as the Yorkshire Ripper at this point. It's kind of astonishing. But like we said, police are not able to put it together because all these different facts that we look at now and say, well, how could you not figure it out? They're scattered. They're scattered around.

There's not one person that has every one of them. So we've talked about all the forensic clues in this case. There's actually quite a bit that they had to work with. You know, from the bite mark to the to the five pound note, the tire tracks, the boot prints, right? It's kind of a lot of evidence, I think, compared to a lot of cases that are solved that we talk about. Right. But the police end up getting distracted from all of that evidence because they receive a letter in the mail. from somebody claiming responsibility for all of these murders and attacks.

And the letters are signed Jack the Ripper. So right away, police latch on to the fact that these letters are real. There's a lot of detail in these letters that are true. One thing that is missing from the letter is any information about the murder of Yvonne Pearson. And you have to remember, her body was not found for quite a long time. But police know that she was killed at a certain time. They know when they got the letter and they know when her body was found. So what you have is some of the investigators thinking, this letter's a hoax.

Because if it was real, the killer would have taken credit for Yvonne Pearson. The reason why the person that wrote the note couldn't is because they didn't have the information. The information was not public. It wasn't out in the papers. But even though there are some investigators that are stating their reservations, the head investigators on this case, they're all in on these letters. They believe that they're 100% legit. And then following up the letters, this person actually sends an audio tape. In addition to claiming responsibility for all of the murders and attacks that we've talked about, this person also claims responsibility for the murder.

of a woman named Joan Harrison that happened in 1975. At the rate I'm going I should be in the book of records. I think it's 11 open now, isn't it? Where I keep on going for quite a while yet. I can't see myself being nicked just yet. I warned you in March that I'd struggle at the end of them.

So that was part of the actual, what they called the Ripper Hoax tape, because it ends up that it is a hoax, but you can hear the person on there talking about by the time they're done, they're going to be in the Guinness Book of World Records, talking about the number at this point. I think he said it was 11.

Some of it's hard for me to understand. But ultimately, they're going to figure out that this is a hoax. But the person behind the hoax would not be caught until 2005. And he ends up getting charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice. and he actually gets eight years in prison. He's sentenced in 2006.

Now, there is some other interesting stuff that is around this one because we talked about the fact that he mentioned this one murder of Joan Harrison. Well, they had forensic information from that crime scene as well. And this is what kind of led police down a bad path because I'm wrapping this hoax up, but they spent a lot of time going down this path. It was, it's not going to be until much. much later they find out it's a hoax. But Joan Harrison, so they have forensic information that they're able to get some blood typing off of. And they also do the same thing from one of the letters that this person

where he licked the envelope to seal it up. And they're able to determine that it's a match. But later on, they're going to find out that it doesn't match Peter Sutcliffe. So what they believe is that this person may have actually murdered Joan Harrison, but was trying to take credit for the work of Peter Sutcliffe. Kind of like a copycat. Yeah. Yeah.

Copycat in the fact that they think he did murder. And I know they were going to go after him. I didn't dive into that research too much further, Gibbs. So he may have ultimately been convicted for Joan Harrison or maybe they didn't have enough evidence, but they're pretty sure that he was the guy. That he might have been the guy for that. What they know is that Peter Sutcliffe didn't kill Joan Harrison.

because he didn't match any of the forensic evidence that they found. Sutcliffe's next victim is going to be a university student by the name of Barbara Leach. This is September 1979 and Barbara Leach was 20 years old. She'd been walking home from a pub one night and Sutcliffe strikes her over the head with a hammer, stabs her eight times and she ends up dying within steps of the door to her home. Sutcliffe gets interviewed two more times by the Ripper Squad. I don't want to make a light of it, but it's five or six times now. It's crazy.

It's very, very odd. But even after these interviews, they're not able to connect him at all to any of the cases, even though we've already talked about it. He had a bunch of connections. You know, at one point, I think they whittled down the number of people on the tire track list to maybe as few as 300, and they whittle down the people on the five pound note list down. I don't know if they whittle it down as far as that,

but down considerably, maybe in the hundreds. You would think manually you could cross-reference those and find out who is on both of those lists. And those people you would focus on like crazy. But for whatever reason, they don't get it. We talked about he's got a shoe size. of seven. He has a gap in his teeth, very, very strong resemblance to the composite sketches that

are done. And it was said that after some of these interviews, the investigators that completed the interviews, they would submit their report. And they would say that Sutcliffe matched many of the characteristics they were looking for. The problem is you have to go back to the tape. Because like I said, police were all in on this tape. And if you heard the accent of the man on the tape, it's very different from the accent of Peter Sutcliffe. So they were putting so much weight on this tape that they would ultimately be a hoax. It's almost like that was trumping the good evidence.

The good evidence. And so superiors would get these reports, but would dismiss them because of the letters and the tape and the fact that they didn't think it could be him. So we jump up to 1980. Sutcliffe is arrested for drunk driving and while he's waiting to stand trial for these charges, he murders

his final two victim. He kills a woman by the name of Marguerite Walls in August. She's 47 years old and then in November he kills Jacqueline Hill 20. He attacked two other women during this time

as well, but they survived. So while he's waiting trial, He's just out killing people and attacking people. He's not changing no behavior. No, nothing to slowing this man down. And I don't think he ever would stop unless he was stopped by somebody else. But one woman that survived an attack by Peter Sutcliffe was a woman by the name of Teresa Sykes. And she was only 16 years old at the time of her attack.

Wow. It took away my freedom. He took away a lot of my life. the night that you attacked me and that I never get back I never ever get it back so Gibbs if that doesn't cement what you and I were kind of talking about

I don't know what does I mean that's an actual victim of Peter Sutcliffe who survived now many years later she's probably doing this interview saying that that incident that she survived it took so much from her she'll never get that back I couldn't even again

we say we can't imagine going through that. No. 16. Not that she's recovered, but just to probably walk down the street without flinching every time you heard a noise, probably took years. Yeah, if she's able to do it now. I don't know how some of this stuff doesn't stay with people for the rest of their life. Now, after Sutcliffe murdered his last victim, which we said was Jacqueline Hill, that was

in November, one of his friends even placed a call to the police. naming Sutcliffe as a possible suspect. So now people around him are starting to think, this guy might be the Yorkshire Ripper. Amazingly, somehow this information gets lost. In what we talked about was this accumulation of Peter Sutcliffe information that the police already had but was scattered. You know, people right now are going, WTF, man.

Oh, there's no doubt. Yeah. Because, and we'll talk about it, but what's sad is, they could have stopped this guy. Multiple occasions. On multiple occasions. And you can look back and see how many of the 13 women could have possibly survived or their deaths been prevented had some of these clues been a little more apparent to police.

Again, I'm trying not to knock them as hard as I can. But there's going to be a report that comes out after this is all said and done. It's going to knock them pretty hard. So this is not something that's not known. So we have to talk about January 2nd, 1981. Sutcliffe is pulled over by police. He has a sex worker in the car with him. And the police find out that the plates on his car are bogus.

Because what Sutcliffe had been doing is stealing plates from other cars and putting them on his own so that he couldn't be identified. So most likely Gibbs, he was about to murder this woman. I believe so. But they arrest him. He gets taken to the Dewsbury police station and questioned. They're talking to him about the Ripper cases because, again, he matched so many of the physical characteristics we've talked about. And the police end up going back to the scene where they had picked him up. And what they find is a knife.

They find a hammer and some rope. That's a little incriminating. Yeah, I would say so. At some point, it was said that Suck, Cliff must have had a knife on him that police didn't catch in the pat down, or even if they did a pat down, I don't know. But he hit it behind a toilet at the police station, and they found that later. So they get a search warrant at this point to search his house. And they're questioning his wife. During the investigation of his house, one of the investigators notices a butcher block, a knife

butcher block, and one of the knives is missing. And it just so happens that when examined, The slot that is open matches exactly the knife that they found at the scene. Now they go to his garage and they find the hacksaw hanging that had been used to try to sever the head of Gene Jordan. So I think they got him Gibbs right now. Sounds like it. We'll see. Let's see how it plays out. But we have to talk a little bit about the interrogation of Sutcliffe at the police department.

Because they strip him down. and for some reason he's wearing a V-neck sweater under his pants. That's different. Yeah. Maybe he's trying to keep his nether regions warm. I don't know. That's just different. But the way it was described is that the sleeves were pulled over his legs and the neck hole is where his wedding tackle was.

Just hanging out. Okay. So I don't know. It seems like an odd fashion choice. Just really weird. I'm sure for police, that must have been a little shocking to have, you know, that on display coming out of a sweater neck hole.

Now, they did have some theories on it, though. One of the theories was that this sweater was maybe being used to protect Sutcliffe's knees as he knelt over the corpses of his victims, you know, with all the stabbing, all the, just everything that he was doing, almost like knee pads, I guess is what they thought. Now, I don't know why he just wouldn't wear knee pads, but it's a theory. It's strange all the way around. It is strange. They questioned him for two days,

and he finally confesses to being the Yorkshire Ripper on January 4th, 1981. They break him pretty easy. Yeah, my theory gives that deep down, these people are cowards. In the case of Sutcliffe, I'd say it was probably pretty easy for him to take the life of a woman using a hammer, using a knife. But when it's turned back around on him, you know, he wilts. He's got no backbone to stand up to police and their questioning. So after he made his confession, Sutcliffe told the police in detail about all the attacks he had carried out. But this is where it starts to turn a little bit strange because Sutcliffe would tell police that God had been talking to him and was telling him to murder these women.

He showed very little emotion in talking about the murders. the only time he showed the slightest bit of emotion was when he was talking about the murder of 16-year-old Jane McDonald. He was officially charged on January 5th. Sutcliffe pled not guilty to 13 counts of murder, but he did plead guilty to manslaughter with diminished responsibility. As a defense, he tried to use the fact that he was hearing voices, that he was merely a tool of God's will,

and he would say that he began hearing voices all the way back in the 60s when he was working as a grave digger. Well, I think I would hear voices if I was digging graves too. I don't know. You might hear something, but I doubt it would be go out and kill women. Yeah. I don't think you'd hear that. Probably not. But you might hear some stuff.

Might hear something. Put the shovel down. Go find a different job. Now, on the attempted murder counts, he would plead not guilty. to those seven. And the prosecution was going to accept the plea after he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic by four separate doctors. But the judge ends up rejecting the diminished responsibility plea and sets a trial for May 5th of 1981. The trial lasted two weeks, which you would think Gibbs in a case like that doesn't seem like very long. Such a big case. And Sutcliffe is found

guilty on all charges. Sutcliffe received a sentence of life in prison and the judge scolded him saying he was beyond redemption and the judge handed down a 30 year minimum before he could be eligible for parole. Still seems a little light to me Gibbs, but I don't know how that compares to how other cases are handled over in England. I think here in the States, that sentence would be much different, but we know there's differences from country to country. And I think we're a lot tougher on sentencing here in America than maybe other countries are. Because you think about it, somebody that murders 13 people and has seven counts of attempted murder, well, you might get what Gibbs, I don't know, 13 life sentences. Yeah. No parole. No chance. It could be a lot

different. After the trial, Sutcliffe ends up confessing to two other attacks, but police determined that trying him on these two was not in the best interest of anyone. Number one, the victims wanted to remain anonymous and it would have been hard for the police to do that and convict him on those two charges. So everything is said and done. And what happens is a man by the name of Sir Lawrence Biford is tasked with reviewing the investigation. How did the police handle it? It's probably not too shocking that it's not going to come out well for the police. And his report showed that the manual system that was used at the time was woefully inadequate.

I mean, I don't think there's any question about that. Right. They talked about index cards that they had kept on each one of the murders. and I guess Peter Sutcliffe's name was found to be on the index card of many of the murders. The problem is they were all kept separate. We kind of talked about some of that a little bit. Old school database, right? Yeah, almost like the card catalog when you go into the library in the old days.

I don't know if they still do that. I haven't been a library since I was. What's the library? You haven't read a book since Truman was in office. What's this thing you call book? So they, again, they had all the information. It was really about the fact that because of how it was kept, no one person had it all. And they just never could put it together.

So just a couple of highlights of what would come out of this Byford report. It talks about Sutcliffe being, quote, otherwise unremarkable young man. But in 69, he came to notice of police on two occasions in connection with incidents involving sex workers. The report said it was very clear that he had on at least one occasion attacked a sex worker back in that time. So without saying it, I think what they're saying is they thought police could have done a better job handling that. And this is all the way back in 69. This is the rock in the back of the head. Yeah.

I mean, remember, he doesn't start killing until, what, 75? Right. Also, it came out that in 69, he was arrested in the red light district. in possession of a hammer. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Exactly. Yeah. And he was arrested, but the arresting officer,

instead of thinking that this was some type of offensive weapon, what he thought was that Sutcliffe was a burglar, and he got charged with something called going equipped for stealing. I never heard of that one before, but it makes sense. Sure. One of the very interesting things that comes out of this report is that after they weighed all the evidence and they looked at other crimes. They felt that there were many more crimes that Peter Sutcliffe committed than what he was

actually charged with and what he would admit to. Yeah, we believe that. Yeah, I believe that too. And one of the reasons they cited was apparently there was a number of assaults on women in the year of 1969, which when they went back and looked at them, they could clearly see that they matched Sutcliffe's M.O. Right? We're talking about women that got hit with hammers. So it wasn't very hard for them to think.

That was easy to connect those dots. Yeah. This is the work of the Yorkshire Ripper. So Gibbs, this Byford report was actually completed in 1981. So it wasn't long after they had it and everything was kind of wrapped up. But it wasn't fully released until like 2006. And again, it's a long. paper and you can imagine what it says, but it's somewhat scathing in its reporting of what the police could have done, what the police missed. And again, we talked about it. When you look through

all the facts, you can see instances where you would say, wow, how did they not put that together? But then you go back and you look at the technology they're working with and index cards and all that. And it wasn't optimal, but you still have to think with the composite sketches, the boot size, the gap in the teeth, just having that information and going out to interview this guy nine times, nine times. Somebody, and don't get me wrong, we talked about it. There are some people that put it together that had very strong suspicions of him, but it wasn't followed up on. So after he's convicted, Peter Sutcliffe changes his name. He takes his mother's maiden name of Coonan. So he changed his name to Peter Coonan. That's weird.

Well, what purpose does it serve? Yeah. Do you worry about getting beat up in prison with his current name? Oh, he does. I mean, they're going to find out who he is anyway. Everybody knows who he is. So Gibbs, you kind of were foreshadowing a little bit because Peter Sutcliffe, and I'm going to call him Sutcliffe. His mama name is Sutcliffe.

I'm going to call him Sutcliffe. He does get attacked numerous times in prison. Originally, he's not sent to a psychiatric unit, even though he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and pretty early on he gets attacked by inmate james castello with a broken coffee jar sweet that's a way to put a hurting on yeah caused four pretty sizable wounds needed 30 stitches to stitch him up and it's not until 1984 so he's he spends probably three years in prison but in 84 he sent to broadmore hospital And we have to talk a little bit about his wife. She filed for separation in 82, finalized the divorce in 94.

I'm not sure why it took 12 years, but she was kind of sticking with him there for a little bit. Yeah, kind of strange. But in Broadmoor, Sutcliff is attacked in 96, and the story was, I guess he had a private room at this Broadmoor hospital. An inmate comes in, asked to borrow a videotape. I mean, what kind of posh lifestyles is this guy leading? He's got VHS tapes and TV, but he tries to strangle Sutcliffe with a wire from some headphone. And then he got attacked a year later in 97 when a guy stabbed him with a pin.

And this was pretty serious. He stabbed him in his eye. And he lost vision in his left eye and his right eye got. So he must have stabbed him a couple times. He was trying to take out this guy's eyes. And I'm guessing in prison, you take out somebody that's a known serial killer. You get a little prison cred. Oh.

Or a lot of prison credit. I would say there's no doubt about it. And I don't give a rat's ass. I mean, this guy was a monster. He deserved anything and everything he gets. I'm just pissed that he's got a private room and he's watching V. I know. What the hell?

So he got attacked a third time in 2007 and this guy was trying to take the one eye he had left. So he lost vision completely in his left. His right eye got pretty damaged. but I guess he regained his sight. And this guy that stabbed him said he was trying to take out his, the only eye he had left, but he missed and he ended up stabbing him in the cheat. So just a little bit more about the aftermath.

You know, what would come out, Gibbs, is that Peter Sutcliffe had all kinds of women writing to him in prison. And this happens more than I would think it would. I don't get it. I just don't ever understand that mindset. Is it the poor baby? Nobody understands you or just, I don't know what they intrigue. What's so intriguing about, you know, even here in the U.S., right, when Manson and all them getting all these letters.

I don't know. I get the fact that some women like the bad boy, but this bad boy killed a whole bunch of women. He would freaking crush your head with a hammer if he got out and saw you. So as a woman, you wouldn't think this would be the kind of guy that you would be sending letters to, sending pictures to. And it was said that he was getting at one point about 30 letters a week from women, what they called admirers. And the BBC actually did a show on Sutcliffe centered around these women that were writing him

and they focused on two women in particular, one that started to write him in 1990 because as she said, she wanted to be a good Christian. But she ends up at some point saying she fell in love with him. And you know, he's eating all this up. He's eating this attention up. And he has so many admirers at one point that he doesn't want some of them to visit in the off chance that they might run into each other. I mean, this guy's living the life besides getting stabbed in the eye and all that.

Prison Casanova. Yeah. In 2009, Sutcliffe filed an application to have a minimum, term set so he could get parole. And the court heard his petition in 2010 and they denied it. They basically said, you're going to serve out your full life term. You're never getting out of prison alive. He had one more appeal in 2011, but it again was rejected. All right, Gibbs. So that is the case of Peter Sutcliffe, bad dude. I mean, go back to what we talked about earlier in the episode, what does it take to make the decision that you're going to hit people in the head with

a hammer, women, that's not an impulse, right? You don't just happen to have a hammer with you and get riled up. You're planning that. You're carrying a hammer around. You're carrying a knife around. You're stalking these women, these sex workers, you know, like we talk about. The wiring is haywire. We don't have the smarts to fully understand it. So we just say the, wiring has gotten crossed or green's touching red and red's touching green or something i don't know things aren't firing on all cylinders that that's all we know with our limited scientific backgrounds moisture got on the all right so before we wrap it up gives we got a couple voicemails let's play those hey mike and gaby this is elisa watson i'm a new listener just started listening to the true crime

all the time unsold i listen a lot i work out kind of strange but looks i get but i'm sure making a lot of gasping faces and eyebrows down at some of these stories. But I just want to tell you guys, you're doing a great job, and I enjoy listening to you at work on my commute. I listen to you all the time. So thanks a lot, guys. Keep up with a good word. Bye-bye.

Oh, that's an awesome voicemail. Hey, nothing like a little gibby. You're on the treadmill or on the stair climber. Well, because you and I are such workout fanatics. It's like, hey, pick up the pace. We should, we would inspire anybody in their workout routine. Yeah, you can go that extra distance. Hey, guys, this is Paula Lima calling you from Vegas.

Just wanted to leave you guys a quick message. As you guys already know, you're definitely one of my favorite podcasts out there. And I'm so proud to be a Patreon supporter. You guys have seriously gotten me through my move into my new home, sleepless nights when I can't go back to sleep after the baby wakes me up, not to mention the long drive, long monotonous drives, I should say, to and from work and just day-to-day living. I absolutely look forward to Sundays, and that's mostly because of you guys. The profiles you cover are always interesting and detailed, and I just love learning new things about the crazies out there in the world.

I'm a true crime, but I just adore you to and appreciate the contents you guys are putting out, And I especially love the hints of comedy like Mike always aging Gibby and then Gibby's K-Barr, by the way, very gangster Gibby. Thanks again, you guys, for all that you do. Keep off the great work. I'm staying safe and keeping my own time ticking. You guys do the same. Well, that's Paula. We love Paula.

We do. Very interactive on social media. And I'm glad she picked up on my gangster kind of style. Yeah, you're gangster. That's right. Big time. If everybody knew just how gangsta you were. They'd be quite afraid.

They would laugh their ass all. They'd be afraid. They walk down the street. They walk on the other side when they come up on me. Yeah, you scare women and children. Yep, yep, yep. All right, Gibbs. So that's it for episode 40.

Can you believe we've been through 40 episodes? 40. Man, I can't believe I put up with you this long. I know. It really is amazing. I was going to say it in the beginning, and then I forgot. It's amazing to think about where we started from. Yeah. We've done 40 episodes in that amount of time.

Well, just like Paula just said, you know, it's getting people through their commute, getting people through their whatever task they have that day, right? Well, I mean, we've heard that people even like to listen to it when they go to bed. Soothing voices. Yeah. I don't care. Just listen. Whatever it does for you.

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, clearly people like it when they're working out too. so more power to everybody. I mean, if we're helping you lose, you know, a couple of pounds, if we're helping you fall asleep. Building your muscles, whatever, putting the baby to sleep.

If we're helping you pass the time in the car, it just makes us feel good to know that whatever it is, if you like it, we're helping you in some way. We haven't heard anybody say that they listen to us why they get jiggy with it. Okay, well, first of all, let me call Will Smith in the 1990s. Remember what getting jiggy with it means. And that's for the jiggy back? All right, guys, that's it.

So for Mike and Gibby, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.