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Part 2 of a three-part British true-crime documentary series

‘Wicked beyond belief’, is how the trial judge summarised the character of Peter William Sutcliffe. Between 1975 and 1980 he murdered 13 women and attempted to murder seven others. The north of England was gripped by fear during a reign of terror the police were unable to terminate. Simon Ford joins former major-crime detective Jacques Morell in an examination of Sutcliffe’s life and crimes. Sutcliffe (who changed his name to Coonan in prison) slipped through the net nine times before being caught almost by accident. Simon asks Jacques: would today’s policing methods have stopped the Yorkshire Ripper sooner?

This podcast features an exclusive interview with a member of the Yorkshire Ripper incident room, Detective Chief Superintendent (retired) Bob Taylor of West Yorkshire Police.

The Six O’clock Knock is a Psycho Killer production.

Transcript
[Music]This podcast contains descriptions of death and violence that some listeners may find upsetting. Hello and welcome to the Six O’clock Knock the true crime podcast that re-examines historical cases through a modern lens I’m Simon Ford a writer journalist and broadcaster and I’m Jacques Morrell an author and former major crime detective in case you're wondering the Six O’clock Knock is police jargon for a dawn raid 6 am being the time a suspect is most likely to be at home and off guard it's the time when we make an arrest on our terms it could be a knock at the door or sometimes we'd go in with a sledgehammer or a battering ram we used to call that the enforcer in this podcast we're going back to the 1970s and a series of murders and attacks on women that transfixed the north of England the perpetrator was one Peter William Sutcliffe or to give him the title chillingly bestowed on him by the press at the time the Yorkshire Ripper when Paul’s teacher asked him about his three favourite things the ten-year-old would say Leeds united David Bowie and going on round with our Alan this Thursday morning Paul was in his element cramming a doorstep jam buddy into his mouth and wrapped up against the autumn chill he was riding shotgun on Alan's milk float never mind that Leeds had lost to Manchester united last Saturday never mind that Art Garfunkel was keeping David Bowie off number one he was Starsky and Alan was Hutch the electric float hummed down Scott Hall Avenue the empty milk bottles jingling like sleigh bells Alan slowed to take the right turn into the Prince Phillip playing fields it was hard to see in the fog and the milk floats headlights dimmed unpredictably Alan stopped outside the caretaker's house lit an embassy and jumped out Paul clambered down beside him hoping the caretaker might say hey up and slip him a packet of sweet cigarettes the red-tipped candy sticks were a treat but Paul was collecting the football cards inside he was desperate to get his idol Leeds midfield hotshot Peter lorimer it was then he noticed something on the grass someone's left a guy out he shouted dashing into the mist shh hissed Alan how many bloody times it was twenty to eight Paul ran over to where the object was lying anticipating a Guy Fawkes effigy like the ones his mates touted round the back streets before bonfire night then he came racing back Alan noticed his expression had changed something made the older brother freeze the bones of Paul's face had rearranged themselves to make room for two enormous eyes it's a body was all he said [Music] the dead woman was Wilma McCann she was 28 and mom to four children all under nine she was the first woman killed by the Yorkshire Ripper although there had been three other assaults on women earlier that year which bore the hallmarks of Wilma's murder crushing blows to the head with a hammer in addition Wilma had been stabbed in the chest and throat there's no memorial to the victims of the Yorkshire Ripper but there should be between October 1975 and November 1980 Sutcliffe murdered 13 women in Leeds Bradford Huddersfield and Manchester he attacked a further seven women who survived but who bore the scars mental and physical for the rest of their lives to say nothing of the families devastated by Sutcliffe he said he targeted sex workers some of his victims were others were not when he was caught Sutcliffe seemed to be attacking women in general his victims did have one thing in common they were all alone vulnerable and unable to defend themselves before we get into it here are the names of the women who died and those we know who survived the first to be murdered was Wilma McCann then Emily Jackson Irene Richardson Patricia Atkinson Jane MacDonald Jean Jordan also known as Jean Royal Yvonne Pearson Helen Rytka Vera Millward Josephine Whittaker Barbara Leach Marguerite Walls and Jacqueline Hill the victims who survived include Anna Rogulskyj Olive Smelt Tracey Brown Marcella Claxton Maureen Long and Marilyn Moore we've decided not to dwell on Sutcliffe's crimes the failure of the police to catch him is well documented first and foremost in the Byford report commissioned in the immediate aftermath of the investigation it was excoriating instead we're going to look at the lessons learned from the Ripper's five-year reign of terror and how they've helped shape modern policing here in the united kingdom the improvements that have been made and we're going to pose the question in the spirit of the Six O’clock Knock how would a modern investigative team approach the inquiry at its key stages [Music] we know that Sutcliffe was interviewed nine times by the police but somehow managed to evade the dragnet in the words of one detective Chris Gregg we had the fly on the flypaper why was Sutcliffe allowed to go free; free to kill again on multiple occasions Jacques I’m wondering when you joined the police in the 1980s was the Yorkshire Ripper mentioned at training college for example and if so what did people say I don't remember much being said by colleagues about the case I worked in the midlands and my training was in Coventry the Yorkshire Ripper case certainly hadn't found its way into the police training manuals although by the time I worked on my first murder case there had been changes to the incident room procedures I also joined in 1985 when the police and criminal evidence act was new I guess that what I’m trying to say here is the outdated attitudes of 1970s policing was changing the way murder squads were formed though still meant it was potluck how good those senior detectives were going to be the families of murder victims should get a golden service every time in 1970s Yorkshire this was still a long way off [Music] a working man's weekly wage in 1977 was about 50 pounds a little over 400 pounds in today's money which meant the crisp new fiver Peter Sutcliffe paid Jean Jordan for sex that October Saturday night would be worth about 40 quid in 2020. Little did Jean who also used the surname royal know she was about to become the fifth woman to be killed by the Ripper Sutcliffe had chosen Manchester because as he later told police things were hotting up a bit in Leeds and Bradford on wasteland near to Manchester's southern cemetery Sutcliffe smashed Jean ten times over the head with a hammer but he was disturbed by a courting couple hid her body and fled the scene [Music] later he realized the brand new five-pound note could be traced back to his pay packet so the next weekend Sutcliffe slipped away from a family party and returned to the scene of the crime when his search for the incriminating banknote proved fruitless he directed his rage at Jean Jordan's body stabbing wildly he found a broken pane of glass and slashed open the stomach of the week old corpse the stench he later told detectives made him vomit then in an attempt to confuse his pursuers he tried unsuccessfully to sever the head with a hacksaw tony fletcher one of the first investigators on the scene thought some ghoul had dug up a body from the nearby cemetery but an examination of the injuries provided an even more shocking explanation the woman's half-severed head was pulped and her face unrecognizable she'd been intimately mutilated with a 10-inch sharpened screwdriver described at Sutcliffe’s trial as a most wicked agent a coil of intestine was wound around her waist her clothes and belongings had been strewn over the surrounding area as if a pack of animals had been at work in fact it was the work of just one animal Peter Sutcliffe Manchester CID had a Ripper murder on their hands on the 15th of October two weeks after the murder an allotment holder came across Jean Jordan's handbag in it was the fiver the banknote which both Peter Sutcliffe and the Ripper inquiry knew could be used to trace him down via his employer Clarke’s haulage Sutcliffe later told police I read about the note being traced to a Shipley bank I knew Clark’s got the wage money from a Shipley bank and that a local inquiry would be made and by some miracle I escaped the dragnet Jacques was it a miracle that Sutcliffe wasn't detected at this point it's difficult to say how close they were but in 1977 they had their best chance to catch him in that year there were four murders three in west Yorkshire and the one we described in Manchester there was a really good line of inquiry in the first murder that year they had officially confirmed they had a serial killer the west Yorkshire chief constable appointed his most senior detective assistant chief constable George Oldfield and more significant if not ironic it was the Manchester murder that produced the best opportunity to date the Manchester team knew they were onto something the five-pound note had been part of a delivery of new notes from the bank of England to Leeds just four days before Jean Jordan's murder the chances of a

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