■Murderous Minds■

Yorkshire Ripper

Soo.. I decided to do this one a bit differently

I added picture's for a bit more information, tell me if I should continue doing this :)

Peter Sutcliffe

From 1975 to 1981 one man cast a pall of fear over the North of England. He became known as the Yorkshire Ripper. He committed more than a dozen ritual murders which were attended with a vicious brutality. He linked the murders by specific atrocities and wrote mockingly to the police while they desperately hunted him. His victims were mostly prostitutes, some vulnerable poor girls and also ordinary working girls just out late at night. His modus operandi, or method, was to strike the victims with a hammer blow to the head, drag her if not already in the darkness, into the shadows, sexually assault her, rob her, then mutilate her with a flurry of knife wounds, sometimes biting her on the breasts; redressing and re-arrangement of the clothing, particularly the shoes, and finally covering the remains with her own coat. In this way twenty three children were left motherless. They were a terrorizing series of murders at irregular intervals, in different cities, over a wide area of Northern England. They caused widespread ripples of fear and were accompanied by letters from the Ripper to the police, who were hunting him. These letters promised further murders with chilling accuracy and added a new dimension of a cunning maniac playing games with the police. More than 300 detectives worked full time on this hunt for three years. It caused widespread suspicion, interrogation and fear as well as costing more than £4 million pounds.

The Yorkshire Ripper murders apparently came to an end in 1981 with the arrest and subsequent conviction of a bearded lorry driver called . This man confessed to all the Ripper's acknowledged murders except one, that of , a poor girl from Preston, Lancashire. The West Yorkshire police succeeded in gaining the conviction of Sutcliffe in the Old Bailey in London, in May 1981. The public felt delivered from the Ripper threat. They were convinced that at last the Ripper was behind bars.

The nightmare began in Leeds, Yorkshire in January 1976, when the body of 42 year old , a mother of three was discovered by shocked workmen in a derelict site. Emily had been sexually assaulted and mutilated near the Gaiety pub, outside which she had earlier been soliciting for prostitution. This murder was immediately linked by the police to a similar style ritual murder of a prostitute, one , a 26 year old mother of four children. Wilma had been murdered near her home in Leeds eleven weeks earlier. Both prostitute victims were robbed and sexually assaulted. The maniac was dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper by the media. There was a lull for more than a year. The nightmare returned to Leeds in February 1977, when the body of 26 year old , a mother of two, was found in a park in Leeds. Irene was poor and unemployed, but she was not a prostitute. This murder was a serious challenge to the police because it bore the Ripper's hall marks. Two and a half months later, a Bradford prostitute, 32 year old , a mother of three, was found brutally murdered and mutilated in her bed at her flat in Bradford. Tina had been sexually assaulted, and her body bore all the hall marks of the Ripper. Two months later the Ripper was back in his old hunting ground in Leeds. In June 1977 the body of 16 year old shop assistant, , was found in a children's playground near her home. The murder bore all the Rippers hall marks. After this murder George Oldfield, the assistant Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police was placed in overall command of the Ripper hunt.