The Times - UK (2020-11-14)

10 2GM Saturday November 14 2020 | the times

News

The morning of April 5, 1979, was cold,

wet and windy. Detective Constable

Bob Bridgestock and his colleague were

“soaked to the skin in two seconds”

after stepping from their car.

They walked through the slanting

rain across Savile Park to the spot

where the crumpled body of Josephine

Whitaker lay on the grass. She had been

beaten with a ball-peen hammer and

stabbed with a sharpened screwdriver.

Josephine, 19, was the tenth victim of

the killer then known as the Yorkshire

Ripper.

“We wanted to cover her body, to

protect her against the elements but to

get a tent we would have had to go to a

phone box, call headquarters and wait

for hours, so we found a tarpaulin on a

nearby wagon and tried to use that,” Mr

Bridgestock said.

“It didn’t work very well and George

Oldfield [the head of the investigation]

wasn’t too impressed when he and the

other senior officers turned up.

“There were no scenes of crime

forensic suits back then. The senior

A police force apologised yesterday for
the distress caused by the derogatory
language of its officers about Peter Sut-
cliffe’s victims, as the man who became
known as the Yorkshire Ripper died
aged 74.
Sutcliffe, one of Britain’s most notori-
ous serial killers, died in hospital early
yesterday after spending 39 years be-
hind bars for the murders of 13 women
in Yorkshire and the northwest
between 1975 and 1980.
He was said to have been suffering
from Covid-19 and to have refused treat-
ment.
Relatives of his victims had mixed
responses to the news, with one calling
Sutcliffe’s brother to offer condolences,
while others expressed relief at the
death of a man whose brutal mutilation
of the women he killed earned him his
grim nickname.
Hours after the Prison Service con-
firmed that Sutcliffe
had died, West
Yorkshire police
apologised to the
relatives of his vic-
tims for the lan-
guage its officers
used at the time of
the investigation.
Many were de-
scribed as women
of “loose morals”
and it was not until
1977, two years
after Sutcliffe
began killing, that
officers described
him as having
targeted his first
“innocent” vic-
tim.
John Robins,
the force’s chief
constable, said:
“On behalf of
West Yorkshire
police, I apolo-
gise for the additional dis-
tress and anxiety caused to all relatives
by the language, tone and terminology
used by senior officers at the time in
relation to Peter Sutcliffe’s victims.
Such language and attitudes may have
reflected wider societal attitudes of the
day but it was as wrong then as it is
now.”
Sutcliffe’s first victim was Wilma
McCann, who was murdered in 1975 in
Chapeltown, Leeds. Yesterday her son,
Richard McCann, said the news had
brought him closure but he was not
celebrating.
Mr McCann told Times Radio that
he had phoned Sutcliffe’s brother to
offer his condolences. “I tend not to feel
or think about how I think about him. I
get on with my life,” he said. “For years
I was consumed with anger for what he
did. I wanted revenge, we plotted
revenge, me and my sister. She was
going to write to him, and befriend him
and go and attack him.”
But he said that changed in 2010.
“The point is, I let go of the anger
enough to this morning pick up the
phone, minutes after I found out, to call
Peter Sutcliffe’s brother, Carl Sutcliffe,

and offer my condolences.”

Carl Sutcliffe had con-

tacted him many years after

reading his book and

“showed some compassion”.

Denise Cavanagh, 62,

who worked as a police offi-

cer during the case, said that

she hoped Sutcliffe had suf-

fered. Ms Cavanagh was 19

when she had been among

the first officers on the scene

after Vera Millward’s body

was found. She told The Times that

death from Covid-19 was “too good” for

Sutcliffe, adding: “I hope he suffered in

the end, I hope he suffocated. He’s cost

the public an absolute fortune over the

years and really was a case for capital

punishment. I’m ecstatic he’s dead but

he should have been gone 40 years ago.

He was absolutely evil.”

The son of Sutcliffe’s third victim,

Irene Richardson, expressed similar

relief, calling Sutcliffe a “piece of shit”.

Geoff Beattie, 51, who lives in Cum-

bria, was adopted as a baby and did not

find out that his mother had been mur-

dered by Sutcliffe until he was 35. He

said he hoped the murderer’s death

would bring “closure” to relatives of all

13 women who were killed. “I hadn’t

realised that he was poorly, so it came

out of the blue really this morning

when I saw,” he said. “But I felt relief and

more closure than I was expecting.”

Neil Jackson, the son of Sutcliffe’s

second victim, said his mother would be

“over the moon” if she had been alive to

hear about Sutcliffe’s death. Emily

Jackson was 42 when she was murdered

in 1976.

Police apology gives

further solace to

families of victims

Charlotte Wace
Northern Correspondent
Fiona Hamilton Crime & Security Editor

Profile

R

ight to the

bitter end,

Peter

Sutcliffe

expressed

no remorse for his

heinous crimes or any

appreciation of their

enormity (Fiona

Hamilton writes).

He never apologised

to his victims or their

families and was

recently said to have

told prison handlers

that he wanted to live

longer because life

was “precious”.

Ultimately he is

said to have died

alone after refusing

medication for the

coronavirus he was

apparently terrified

of, a feeble demise for

the man

who

terrorised

Yorkshire

for years.

Sutcliffe

spent the

last four

years of his

life at HMP

Frankland’s

DSPD unit

for inmates with

severe personality

disorders, where he

complained about

conditions and was

said to be fearful of

other inmates.

He spent most of his

incarceration in

Broadmoor, where he

was moved after

paranoid

schizophrenia was

diagnosed.

Much of his time

was spent writing

letters to female

devotees, urging them

to visit him and even

including a

Valentine’s card to

one. He also revealed

to fans in letters that

he was still visited by

his ex-wife Sonya.

His brother, Carl,

one of his six siblings,

said he had stopped

speaking to him years

ago after tiring of his

“self pity”.

In 2016 Carl told

The Sun: “Men hitting

women is my pet hate,

but to kill them —

and with a hammer?

What he did was

disgusting.”

Sutcliffe, born in

1946, was raised in

Heaton Royd, north of

Bradford, by John

Sutcliffe, a textile

worker, and his wife

Kathleen (née

Coonan). After

leaving school at 15 he

became a gravedigger

for the local council

in 1964 but was

sacked and drifted

around. He was

eventually rehired.

In 1967 he met

Sonia Szurma and

they were married in

1974. They divorced
      nearly 20 years later.
      His brother-in-law
      said when they were
      alone he would talk
      about prostitutes.
      Each time the killer
      struck, Sutcliffe
      played the concerned
      husband and brother.
      He joined a group
      of citizen radio users
      dedicated to helping
      the police in their
      hunt for the killer — a
      brazen move for the
      man detectives were
      desperately seeking.

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‘I knew she was no prostitute

investigators stood there over the body,

cigarettes in their mouths, wondering

what had happened, who this was.”

Josephine was attacked as she walked

home across the park the night before.

Peter Sutcliffe, a Bradford lorry driver,

had been drinking in a Halifax pub then

roamed the streets in his car looking for

a victim. He spotted Josephine, parked

his car, followed her, engaged her in

conversation then attacked her.

Her murder came at a time of

economic crisis and political turmoil.

James Callaghan’s Labour

government had collapsed,

prompting a general

election campaign that

would propel Margaret

Thatcher to power.

The Irish National

Liberation Army had

marked the start of that

campaign by murdering

Thatcher’s close ally, the MP

Airey Neave, with a car bomb on

March 30 in the underground parking

area at parliament.

While Westminster raged, the mood

in the communities that Sutcliffe had

terrorised since 1975 was fearful.

The police, press and public had

become conditioned to the idea that the

Ripper targeted sex workers. In June

1977 he murdered Jayne MacDonald,

16, in Leeds but, the theory went, he had

mistaken her for a prostitute. Jayne’s

murder heightened the importance of

the case and Oldfield, an assistant chief

constable, was drafted in to take charge

of the inquiry.

Josephine was a building society

clerk and as Sutcliffe told police in 1981:

“I realised she was not a prostitute, but

at that time I wasn’t bothered, I just

wanted to kill a woman.”

Mr Bridgestock, who had worked in

the vice squad, knew many of the sex

workers and was on the investigation

the year before when Helen Rytka was

murdered in Huddersfield. He said:

“They all had their reasons for

being on the streets. Some

worked for pimps, some

simply needed to feed

their families, some

wanted money for drugs.

Society seemed to think

he was only targeting one

group of people. That

suddenly changed; there

was a lot more fear.”

A neighbour who recalled

discussing the Ripper with Sutcliffe

and his wife, Sonia, said the killer even

pretended that he was afraid himself.

“Sonia described to me how the

streets of Leeds were deserted and how

she had clung to Peter’s arm for

protection,” Barbara Bowman said.

“Peter had even said to her, ‘I am a bit

frightened.’ ”

The police’s attitude to many of the

victims was laid bare in a press

conference in October 1979. Detective

As fear stalked a nation

in crisis, police prejudice

and incompetence let the

killing spree continue,

Sean O’Neill writes

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