|
The No1 Suspect
Two weeks after Emily
Jackson’s murder, her friend Maria Sellars gave the police a
description of the man she saw with Emily. He was an Irishman, known
as a regular punter in the area. He was aged about 50. He was of fat
build. He had a full beard, unshaped and bushy with bushy eyebrows.
His eyes were almost closed. He had a round nose. He had very
distinctive burnlike scars. He was tatooed on his arms. He wore 2
large gold rings. His clothes were dusty like a building worker. He
was known to other prostitutes in the area.
The Stocky Bearded
Irishman.
At 10.15pm on the 23rd April 1977 Tina
Atkinson,who was drunk was propositioned by Billy Tracey outside
the Carlisle pub in Lumb Lane Bradford . Tracey had come to a known
prostitute haunt to commit another murder. The streets were quiet
and people were drunk. It was Saturday night, and the pubs were
full.
Tracey walked with her a short distance to her flat where he
bludgeoned her when she stepped through the door. Her pimp found the
body when she had’nt returned to the job. . The stocky bearded man
was noticed with Tina by an eyewittness ,probably her pimp, and he
gave a description to the police. Within 2 days Chief Superintendant
John Domaille had issued a bulletin to all police stations looking
for the well described stocky bearded Irishman.
This is a page from David Yallop's
book
His identikit photo was published in all the papers but Tracey
was back in Ireland and nobody thought to look in Ireland for the
Irishman.
2 month later on the 25th June ,again at 10.30pm on
Saturday night, Tracey came to Leeds from his home in Ireland. He
had picked the place and the time. He was seen hanging around the
Hayfield pub in Chapletown Road, a pub frequented by prostitutes and
their pimps. However because of their fears of him the girls were
working in pairs and their pimps were keeping a sharper eye on them.
He couldn’t get one alone and as it was approaching midnight Tracey
, always an opportunist seized his chance when the innocent Jayne
MacDonald took a short cut through the Hayfield car park on her
way home. He probably asked her for directions and when she turned
her head she was struck senseless. He dragged her into the adjacent
playground where he got down to the serious business that he had
come to do. He then took a taxi to the city centre and another one
on to Manchester where he took a pre arranged guest house for the
night, before returning to Dublin the next day and home, to be on
the job on Monday morning.
This time George Oldfield was in charge. Again the stocky bearded
man was reported seen in the vicinity . There was no doubt that it
was a Ripper murder. Oldfield again redoubled his efforts to trace
the stocky bearded Irishman, with the rings tatooes and scars. He
later stated that they never traced this man.
From this point on Sutcliffes attacks and his photofits plus
Traceys letters and taped message obscured the No 1 suspect but
these facts remain.
The stocky bearded tatooed scarred Irishman had to be somewhere
and I was the unfortunate person who had him in my employ in Ireland
in 1979 and worse still I chanced to read that Ripper article in the
Sunday
Telegraph and tumbled to his secret . This revelation set in
train a chain of events which are still ongoing. Had I been wrong
,nobody would have been more relieved to be proved wrong. All the
evidence that subsequently came to light merely served to
demonstrate and prove beyond any shadow of doubt that it was
correct. The burden of this knowledge was a great weight and when it
became apparent that, like in the Stefan
Kiszko case, the Judith Ward case,
the Birmingham 6 and numerous other miscarriages of justice, the
police would not intervene, I decided to publish the information I
had.
Terry Hawkshaw from Drighlington, near Bradford became a
serious suspect. He was a taxi man and had carried some of these
prostitutes in his cab. He fitted the description of the Irish
suspect except he was an Englishman. Hawkshaw had a large gap
between his top front teeth and he was the rare B
secretor blood group. Hawkshaw was the nearest thing to Tracey in
Yorkshire. George Oldfield almost had him convinced that he was the
Ripper without himself even knowing it. Fortunately for him he had a
solid alibi on the night of Helen
Rytka’s murder in Huddersfield and he was eliminated
then.
When I read the Sunday Telegraph article about the Ripper in
November 1979, the article that was to awaken me to Tracey's secret,
I knew nothing of an Irish suspect in 1976 and 1977. Much less
did I know that they were looking for an Irishman who resembled
Billy Tracey to a tee. Had I known about this Irish suspect I
would have been much more positive in my dealings with the police
but I let it run and witnessed the way they wound up with Sutcliffe
and their performance. After Sutcliffe's Court case, David Yallop's
book outlined the Irish suspect, which was the first I knew of this
matter, eighteen months after I made the breakthrough.
This was highly significant confirming evidence. This
evidence reinforced my conviction and I knew then that I could put
the story together so that an intelligent person could see what
happened if they studied the case. It was an unbelievable and
bizarre story but Tracey was just that, an unbelievable and bizarre
individual.
. Now with hindsight we can compare Tracey with the evidence and
look at the statistics of probability.
The odds against this happening must surely be millions if not
billions to one.Those odds made it all the more difficult to get
this story across.
This well described Irishman was the last person seen with 2
victims and he was seen at the scene of the McDonald murder.
Clearly he had to be traced.
Ireland has under 4 million citizens in all. Even if there were
10,000 Irishmen who looked like the bearded man and were stocky or
fat and in the age group of 35 to 50 how many of them would be
tatooed?, Say 10% and we are down to 1000 tatooed stocky
bearded men resembling the photofit.
How many of these 10,000 Irishmen would have a long criminal
record for violent sex related crime the length and breadth of
England, a foreign country?
Of the club of 1000 how many of these would have obvious burn
like scars on their hands or arms ? Perhaps 10 but even if it
was ten times ten, say 100 we are down to 100 stocky bearded
Irishmen resembling the photofit who also have tatooes and burn like
scars. Tracey had a large burn like scar on both arms which he
sustained when someone tried to shoot him in London. They can
be seen on the site photo.He also had two more similar scars on his
neck which are concealed by the beard and are also bullet wounds.
Maria Sellars thought the suspect had scars on his face also.
How many of this group would have a large gap in their top
front teeth ? Tracey has all these so far. Lets assume we have
10 suspects in the room. How many of these are recorded
aggressive psychopaths in the U.K.? Tracey is.
The Ripper was obviously a sex fiend. How many of these suspects
are sex maniacs ? Tracey is known as one.
How many served 12 years in English maximum security prisons
?
How many Irishmen were deported from England 4 times ? I have
the evidence that puts this deportee back in the murder area within
days of the last Ripper murder. What was his business there
?
How many of these Irishmen would make an unprovoked attack
on his own nephew by luring him first to his home and then
striking him hard with a hammer on the back of the head
before wittnesses restrained him,and this shortly before the arrest
of Peter Sutcliffe ? Not many, but Billy Tracey did.
How many have the rare B secretor blood group ? Tracey
has.
How many of these Irish suspects was married to a convicted
prostitute with a record in the U.K ?
How many of these stocky bearded Irishmen served time in Preston
, Durham and Manchester jails ? Tracey did.
How many of these Irish suspects have a record of at least 50
different assaults of all kinds on policemen and prison officers
in the U.K ? Tracey has.
How many send postcards and letters to the police ? I
saw him myself sending mail to policemen.
Tracey on holiday.
How many Irishmen of any description had written to complain
to the West Yorkshire police about an alleged swindle in Leeds
at that time,or at any time ever and received a reply and apology
from the Chief Constable ? Not many but Billy Tracey did.
He enjoyed showing the letter to his acquaintances.
How many admitted themselves into a mental hospital as a
contingency plan while Sutcliffe was on remand and before the
charges for 13 murders were laid against him ?
I could go on and on with more evidence pointing the finger at
Tracey. He fits the Ripper frame and it defies all reason that based
on his criminal record alone, he was not high on the list of
suspects even if he was never described by so many wittnesses. The
Ripper's motive of winding up the police was always known to them
but they never admitted this but rather suggested that the Ripper
was a man who hated prostitutes. Nothing could be further from
the truth. He hated the police intensely and was forever
preoccupied with them and feeding them with false information, in
Ireland,as well as in England. This was his life. It would be
impossible to find another Irishman who had a record like Tracey's
in the UK at that time. It would be impossible for me, the author,
to concoct such a litany of telling evidence against any man without
inviting a libel action. No libel was ever threatened because the
facts outlined were true. The evidence fits the man.
Was there another stocky, fat, tatooed, bearded, scarred sex
maniac with a big gap between his top teeth and B blood group
Irishman, who had associations with Preston, Manchester and West
Yorkshire, alive at that time? A man who also wrote to the Chief
Constable of West Yorkshire and who used a hammer on his nephew's
head before going into the mental home voluntarily only days before
Peter Sutcliffe was charged with all the Ripper murders but one. A
man who was a violent pimp and who was a recorded agressive
psychopath in the UK prison system.A well described man seen at the
scene of three of the murders and never traced. All these and much
more show Billy Tracey as that unique individual who alone fits
the frame.
With Tracey in the frame everything fits. Nobody else could fit
it. It is unique. With Sutcliffe in the frame nothing fits
and his conviction was based on his confessions alone ,with a
constabulary compromised by their own tactical blunders offering him
leniency for these confessions.
| 
