EXCLUSIVE
A NEW BOOK CLAIMS PETER SUTCLIFFE COMMITTED MORE MURDERS THAN HE WAS CONVICTED OF…
Peter Sutcliffe instilled terror into women throughout the 1970s and early ’80s. The former grave digger and lorry driver was convicted of 13 murders and seven attempted murders in 1981, but with police failings and misogynistic attitudes hampering the investigation, it has long been suspected he may have committed many more crimes. And now the authors of anew book may just have found the evidence.
Inside The Mind Of The Yorkshire Ripper – The Final Investigation sees former police intelligence officer Chris Clark and investigative journalist Tim Hicks put forward a compelling case that Sutcliffe, infamously dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper, committed many attacks that have never before been linked to him. “We have identified 81 attacks at various times, of which 41 were murders,” Tim tells us. “We have covered his life until his arrest and tried to include every attack we believe he was responsible for. We have done that by looking at various police forces’ unsolved crimes that fit the parameters of Sutcliffe’s known offending. We only included offences where we had enough evidence to tie them down in terms of victim preference, modus operandi and location.”
By using route packages –avariant of geographical profiling of his movements –and cluster analysis of the attacks, Chris and Tim also set out to prove that Sutcliffe was active across awider area than previously thought. “We plotted all the routes Sutcliffe routinely followed, either in his private life or his work as alorry driver for Clark Transport,” Tim explains. “We identified 19 different routes and started looking for unsolved murders and attacks along those.” He continues, “This was astep forward in the analysis of Sutcliffe’s offending –I’m surprised it’s never been done before.”
EARLY VICTIMS?
Through their painstaking analysis, Chris and Tim believe Sutcliffe, who was thought to be anecrophile from his job as acemetery worker, may have committed his first murder in 1964. This would have been 11 years prior to Wilma McCann’s murder, the first death he was convicted of. Margaret “Vicky” Williamson, 63, was killed on 23 December, near Halifax, as she walked home after doing her Christmas shopping. Her body was found on Christmas Day. Eyewitnesses say she had been followed by amale youth, whose description fits Sutcliffe. “Vicky is our target start date, when Sutcliffe would have been 18 years old,” says Chris. “There may even be other attacks or murders before that, but we don’t have that public records information.”
Sixteen months later, in April 1966, bookkeeper Fred Craven –aneighbour of Sutcliffe’s –was found dead. His injuries were consistent with ahammer blow to the head, which was Sutcliffe’s favoured method of attack
