Ripper ’sure to have killed mo
THE Yorkshire Ripper was almost certainly responsible for many more murders and attacks than the 13 killings he is known to have carried out, an official report revealed today.
An inquiry into the killings by Peter Sutcliffe – released by the Home Office under freedom of information laws – also says that he should have been on a shortlist of three possible killers before he carried out his last four murders. It suggests that he could have been caught sooner but for police blunders.
The report lists a series of vital leads that were pursued inadequately by police – including tyre tracks at the scene of several killings, a Pounds 5 note found in a Monogram Mini Lin Fake Handbags victim’s handbag and multiple sightings of Sutcliffe’s vehicle in red-light districts.
The findings are in a report by the former chief inspector of constabulary Sir Lawrence Byford into the Ripper killings between 1975 and 1980.
In it, Sir Lawrence concludes that an unexplained “lull” in Sutcliffe’s criminal activities between 1969 and 1975, when the first confirmed killing occurred, means that he probably carried out more murders and attacks.
It also gives details of a number of other attacks carried out after 1975, which were not linked at the time to the Ripper inquiry, but were likely to have been carried out by Sutcliffe.
“It is my firm conclusion that between 1969 and 1980 Sutcliffe was probably responsible for many attacks, which he has not yet admitted, not only in the West Yorkshire and Manchester area, but also in other parts of the country,” Sir Lawrence’s report states.
“We feel it is highly improbable that the crimes in respect of which Sutcliffe has been charged and convicted are the only ones attributable to him.”
The report places much of the blame for the failure to catch Sutcliffe, who was interviewed 12 times before his final arrest, on flaws in the way the vast amount of information being gathered during the investigation was handled.
It reveals, for example, that although a national conviction card on Sutcliffe showed him as having a previous conviction for “going equipped with a hammer”, this vital information was not on records kept by West Yorkshire Police. A ball-pin hammer was used by Sutcliffe to kill or injure his victims in many of his attacks. Detectives are also criticised for placing too much reliance on the ” Wearside Jack” tape sent by a hoaxer claiming to be the Ripper.
The report says that while officers were right to pursue this lead, they were mistakenly convinced that the hoaxer, who was recently jailed, was the Ripper when there was no firm evidence.
The error meant that detectives, and the public, focused on finding a man with a north-eastern accent when Sutcliffe was a Yorkshireman. Another crucial blunder involved the failure to link tyre marks found at the scene of three murders with Sutcliffe. In November 1977, for instance, officers twice interviewed him, but failed to examine the wheels and tyres of his car.
Similarly, index cards kept on suspect vehicles identified in connection with the murders did not list the names of the owners, preventing Sutcliffe’s name being linked more quickly to the killings.
A Pounds 5 note found in the handbag of another early victim was linked to a bank used by Sutcliffe’s employers and could have provided another link. This “allowed Sutcliffe t
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