Daily Mail - 23.08.2019

Daily Mail, Friday, August 23, 2019 Page 49

men to stop looking for a
Yorkshireman and redirected all
the squad’s manpower towards
finding the man the media dubbed
‘Wearside Jack’.
Then, in June 1979, when the
national outcry over his failure to
trap the Ripper had become so
feverish the matter was being raised
in Parliament, the CID chief took
the decision to make the humiliat-
ing recording public.
not only was it played on TV and
radio news, but more than a million
pounds of taxpayer’s money — then
a colossal sum — was spent on a
national advertising campaign,
urging people to look and listen out
for a suspicious family member,
friend or neighbour with a thick
Sunderland brogue.
‘Before [receiving the tape] we
know we were looking for a man.
There are literally millions, and we
didn’t know where he came from,
but now we can localise the area.
The field is narrowed appreciably,
as I’m sure you’ll agree,’ Oldfield
told a packed press conference.
Challenging ‘Jack’ to reveal his
identity and meet him — any time,

anywhere — the ailing police chief,

by then working 16-hour days,

fuelled largely by cigarettes and

whisky, even admitted that the

hunt had become personal.

It was a calamitous error. One

that would cost at least three more

women their lives.

For, of course, the sneering voice

on that unforgettable recording

was not that of the real Yorkshire

Ripper, Bradford-based lorry driver

Peter Sutcliffe.

It belonged to Humble, who had

been arrested for burglary at 17,

and sent to a young offender’s

institution two years later for kick-

ing an off-duty police officer, and

thereafter held a lifelong grudge

against the police. He was then just

23 years old.

At the time, the net was finally

beginning to close on Sutcliffe, who

had begun by bludgeoning and

mutilating prostitutes, against

whom he held a grievance, but later

targeted any young woman who

crossed his path when he was

gripped by the urge to kill.

Indeed, he had already been ques-

tioned by police several times, and,

since his alibis were thin and his

cars had repeatedly been spotted

trawling red light areas, it was

surely only a matter of time before

he was trapped.

But Sutcliffe spoke with a broad

Bradford accent and the tape

seemed to exonerate him.

By the time he was arrested, in

January, 1981, by two Sheffield

police officers who stumbled upon

his parked car as he was about to

claim his next victim (an unwitting

sex-worker he had picked up), the

damage had been done.

Sutcliffe had by then killed three

more women — student Barbara

Leach, 20, who was murdered just

two months after the tape was first

played, civil servant Marguerite

Walls, 47, and Sunday school

teacher Jacqueline Hill, 20.

Were it not for the fact that police

were on a wild goose chase for

‘Wearside Jack’, avers investigative

journalist Michael Bilton, author of

Wicked Beyond Belief, the defini-

tive book on the bungled Ripper

investigation, all of these women

might be alive today.

Certainly Beryl Leach, the mother

of Barbara, was forever convinced

that Humble had her daughter’s

‘blood on his hands’.

So was Mr Justice Boreham, the

judge who presided over Sutcliffe’s

Old Bailey trial in 1981. Handing

down 13 life sentences, the

judge made special mention

of the anonymous man who

had thrown police off the

trail, remarking that ‘the

scent was falsified by a cyni-

cal, I think almost inhuman

hoaxer’, who then remained

at large. He added: ‘I refer to

the tape...and the letters. I

suspect I also express the

hope of every member of the

public that he might someday

be exposed.’

Humble, an ex-labourer from

Sunderland who had led a

wretched existence, was to

evade capture for 26 years.

He was identified in 2005,

after the new head of West

Yorkshire CID Chris Gregg —

who had been a junior officer on

the Ripper Squad — ordered a

cold-case review of the unsolved

hoax inquiry, not least because

he wished to remove the stain it

had placed on the force.

Incredibly, the original letters

and tape had been lost

among hundreds of

thousands of documents

and exhibits gathered

by the Ripper Squad.

But eventually one of the

envelopes was found and

a saliva sample obtained.

Advanced DnA testing

techniques showed a

one-in-a-billion match

with samples provided by

Humble, whose profile

had by then been logged

in the national police data

base for minor offences.

W

Hen he was

jailed for

just eight

years for

perverting the course of

justice, many believed he

had got off lightly. Humble

was released in 2009 after

serving half his sentence

and given a new identity —

John Samuel Anderson.

He moved to a squalid flat

in South Shields, where few

people had any idea he was

the Ripper hoaxer. Accord-

ing to a friend, he lived out

his days drinking himself

into oblivion on cheap wine and

strong lager to try to forget the ter-

rible consequences of his crime.

Aside from his loathing for ‘curs-

erered coppers’, as he termed them

in his strange diction, he was known

to have had a fascination with the

story of the 19th-century Jack the

Ripper, who also sent taunting

letters to the police.

He even studied the Victorian Rip-

per’s language and attempted to

copy it in his own, appallingly writ-

ten and misspelt letters.

He had also followed the Yorkshire

Ripper case closely, and a pathetic

desire for vicarious notoriety

appears to have been a contribu-

tory factor. However, after Barbara

Leach was murdered, Humble was

apparently stricken with remorse,

and phoned the police anonymously

to reveal he was a hoaxer — but he

was not believed by the top brass,

and by then it was too late.

Later, Humble tried to commit

suicide three times, once by leaping

90ft into a river from a bridge. Ironi-

cally he was rescued... by the very

police officers he despised.

The sad truth is Oldfield — who

had been put out to grass before

the Ripper was caught, and died

soon after his career came to its

ignominious end — ought never

have been taken in by Humble’s

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Web (clockwise from top

left): Hoaxer Humble in

2016, victim Barbara

Leach, the real Yorkshire

Ripper Peter Sutcliffe,

Jacqueline Hill, a false

letter, envelope and tape,

and Marguerite Walls

Picture: NOBLE /

DRAPER