After the trial it was reluctantly conceded by the West Yorkshire police that Peter Sutcliffe had been a Ripper suspect for a number of years. In fact they revealed that he had been interviewed not once, but nine times. His first interview was on the 2nd of November 1977 with Manchester detectives who were investigating the murder of Jean Jordan in Manchester a few weeks previously. The strange killer had returned to the scene of the murder one week later and removed her body from the bushes. Almost a week later this mystery man returned a second time to the scene and this time he dumped the victim's handbag which contained a brand new five pound note. The police knew that the fiver had been planted there by the killer. They were anxious to identify this strange man. The search for the fiver was narrowed down to a number of works in the Bingley/Shipley area of Bradford. Clarke's Transport was one of these works. Peter Sutcliffe was one of Clarke's lorry drivers. Sutcliffe was quickly put on a short list and six days later two policemen came to his house, armed with a search warrant. They again questioned him and his wife. This time, his wife Sonia gave him an alibi.

Mr. William Clarke, the managing director of Clarkes Transport spoke to the B.B.C. reporter. "They came in and they checked through everybody in the works, they checked on all the money and also... Then they came back after a week, and the handwriting. They came in again and checked all the dates over again. They went through his handwriting again and they reckoned there was something, it didn't make sense and there was certain words they wanted reproduced. They then took Peter in again for further questioning, into the police station where he was for a quite considerable time."

A fellow lorry driver was interviewed also... "100 per cent police search, saliva samples, blood samples, handwriting samples, teeth, they checked his tools, boots, footprints, car tyres, pulled his car to bits, and everything turned out normal, and then two years later, they came to him again. They took us all together, all in a block bunch, not as individuals but in a block bunch. They did us all on the same evening and all on the same day. So the following morning, we were scared at work. Everybody was talking about Him out there." WHAT WAS PETER SUTCLIFFE'S REACTION ? "It was just the same as everybody else's They took a blood sample, just the same as everybody else."

Sutcliffe's school teacher told a B.B.C. reporter... "All I can remember is that he was a very quiet, obedient, respectful boy. He never shone in any way and I would simply say that he was of average intelligence but very quiet and reserved."

Peter Sutcliffe's father was equally shocked "No way am I going to desert him. I'm not going to write him off. I want to remember the lad as he was."

Peter Sutcliffe, who was a disturbed attacker of lone females in 1975 and in 1976 first became involved with the Yorkshire Ripper on the 5th of February 1977 when the Ripper murdered Irene Richardson in the same park in Leeds where he had six months earlier assaulted the black girl Marcella Claxton. Peter Sutcliffe got the message. However Sutcliffe's involvement with the police did not come until nine months later. He was a very disturbed and intense man. His marriage to Sonia proved to be a disaster. He turned to hating women. She used to scream at her husband and pull the T.V. plug out on him. He had to wash all his own clothes and their love life was dismal. Less than one year after his marriage he vented his hatred for women on Mrs. Anna Rogulsky in Keithley, Mrs. Olive Smelt in Halifax, and Tracy Browne, a schoolgirl in Keighley. All three victims were struck on the head with a stone loaded sock. Sutcliffe masturbated over the prostrate victims and then ran away. His attack on Miss Claxton in Leeds nine months later had the same M.O. or modus operandi.

The story about this strange attacker did not escape the notice of the Ripper who lived in the area and who had committed several murders in that area in the past twelve months. He knew there was a disturbed maniac at large. At the time of the Claxton assault only two of the Ripper murders Wilma McCann and Emily Jackson were linked and the legend of the Yorkshire Ripper was born. At this point I would like to explain that the Yorkshire Ripper and letter writer was the principal murderer in the series of Ripper murders. Peter Sutcliffe's assaults and murders became linked to the Yorkshire Ripper murders because of the information contained in the Ripper's letters and because of police error. Although the police knew that a copy-cat killer was involved in the scene they didn't quite know what the real motive was. The copy-cat killer finally turned out to be Peter Sutcliffe, but for various reasons which will be explained later, he was charged with all the Ripper's murders. The Ripper knew that Sutcliffe's motive was sexual as he baited him. Jean Jordan was a prostitute in Manchester and was similarly struck down by Sutcliffe. Because there was no report of the assault in the Manchester papers, the disturbed Sutcliffe returned to the scene of the crime eight days later. He dragged Jean's body from where it was hidden under a double hedge and left it exposed on the grass. This disturbed man who had earlier in that year engaged in tit-for-tat murders with the Yorkshire Ripper had thrown in the towel. He wanted to be arrested as the Ripper. Massive publicity accompanied the Ripper's brutal murders. Little or none was attached to his. Sutcliffe conducted his operations openly, with his car parked on a busy motorway. He was hoping to be caught on the job as the Yorkshire Ripper, but nobody saw him. Nobody wanted to know. Six days later, he returned to the scene of the crime a second time, where he deposited Jean Jordan's handbag, which he had held in his possession. This time, he placed a brand new five pound note in it, hoping it would bring the police to his doorstep. It had the desired effect. Two weeks later Manchester police were interviewing Sutcliffe. He didn't give himself up and the police didn't make an arrest. One week later they came to his house with a search warrant and again questioned him and his wife. This time his wife gave him an alibi. However, he was on a short list of suspects.

One month later, Marilyn Moore, a prostitute in Leeds was assaulted because she refused to have sex with a client or as they are called, a punter, until she got her fee of a fiver first. She gave police a good description of her attacker which closely resembled Sutcliffe. She also gave his name and a description of his car. He called himself Dave.

The Manchester police never made the connection because this assault was the responsibility of the Leeds police under George Oldfield. Sutcliffe, in desperation picked up prostitute Yvonne Pearson, who was soliciting on the same comer that the Ripper had picked up Tina Atkinson in Bradford about eight months earlier. He murdered Yvonne and hid her body under a settee which he covered with sods of earth on waste land in Bradford, where it was to remain for a further three months until it's discovery. At the time of the pick up by Sutcliffe, Yvonne was being watched by Ripper squad detectives, who were staking out the prostitutes in Lumb Lane, in the hope of trapping the Ripper. Yvonne felt safe soliciting on that comer. The detectives were spotting all the punters, getting their descriptions and their car numbers which they made notes of. They gave a very accurate description of Sutcliffe, the man who picked her up. They said he was a white Asian. The only problem for Sutcliffe, who wanted to be arrested, was that the policemen who had interviewed him only a few weeks previously were from Manchester. These were Bradford cops who were watching Yvonne Pearson. They didn't know that the white Asian was on a short list of about a hundred suspects for the Manchester murder of Jean Jordan.

Such police rivalry bedevilled the whole investigation from start to finish and in many ways it was this territorial independence and police rivalry, which was in large part, an incentive for the Ripper to carry on his murders. Information and clues were not pooled. Many policemen didn't even trust other policemen and in fact there was some speculation for some time that the Ripper might even have been a policeman. In the meantime, the Ripper murdered Helen Rytka in Huddersfield. The customary brutality of the Ripper guaranteed mass publicity for the Rytka murder. At the same time, newspaper headlines referring to the five pound note enquiry in Bradford were reporting, "100 names left in Ripper hunt" and "Net closes on Ripper". Although the police had stated that the Jordan murder was not a Ripper murder, the mass media had different views. Peter Sutcliffe was locked in a desperate battle with the Ripper.

Five weeks after the Rytka murder the Ripper sent a letter to George Oldfield, who was appealing for information. He gave Oldfield his count to date. He included in it, the Jordan murder, and threw in the murder of Joan Harrison in Preston, for good measure. Less than a week later he sent a second letter to the Daily Mirror office in Manchester. He knew the editor would send the letter straight to the police. This time he was more emphatic when he said, "maybe Manchester again", when he promised his next murder. Joan Harrison had been murdered in Preston in November 1975. Her murder had been accompanied by much the same ritual and violence as the present series of Yorkshire Ripper recognised murders. The only reason she was left out of the Ripper frame at this time was that this murder was the responsibility of the Lancashire Police, who liked to deal with their own murders and catch their own criminals. The Ripper was exploiting human rivalry by crossing boundaries. Two months later the Ripper delivered his promise by murdering 41 year old Vera Millward, a former prostitute, in Manchester again. A fortnight later the first Manchester murder, that of Jean Jordan, was taken into the Ripper frame by the police, on the advice of the Ripper himself. This action effectively tied Peter Sutcliffe and his five pound note clue into the Ripper frame. The problem was Sutcliffe's blood group and teeth marks were different to the Ripper's. This was known from the bite marks on the victims and from saliva which would attend the bite marks, and from semen deposited when he sexually assaulted some. The Ripper was the rare blood group B secretor He was one man in sixteen. In rape and murder cases blood testing is an easy, cheap and efficient way of eliminating suspects for the police. Once the blood group of a rapist or murderer is known, suspects can be easily blood tested, and the innocent eliminated accordingly. With such a rare blood group, suspects with B blood would be very few.

There was a break for almost a year. Then in March 1979, the Ripper sent a third letter to George Oldfield promising another murder and gave details of Mrs. Millward's hospitalisation. The saliva used to seal the envelope yielded traces of the rare B blood group. The writer also planted clear bite marks on the paper. Less than two weeks later, the Ripper murdered Josephine Whittaker in Halifax. Josephine was a 19 year old respectable girl who was on her way home late at night. As if to confirm his approval of Oldfield's inclusion of Joan Harrison in the Ripper frame, he bit Josephine deeply on the left breast just as he had done to Joan Harrison and his letter paper. The blood group from saliva and teeth impressions were identical. The usual wave of publicity attended this murder, then in June 1979 the tape recording with the flat Geordie voice was sent to George Oldfield. This promised another murder in September or October. On the lst of September, 20 year old Barbara Leach, a university student, was murdered in Bradford. In the meantime the deranged Peter Sutcliffe had been interviewed by the police and was eliminated every time because his blood group and teeth pattern didnt match the Ripper's.

Sutcliffe then sought out a newspaper reporter Yvonne Mysliwiec who worked for a newspaper in Ilkley and on October 11th 1979 he confronted her and battered her with a hammer and fled hoping she would identify him as the Ripper. She didnt.

In the end Sutcliffe's desperation led him to stage his arrest in an elaborate plan which he set up in an outside police area, in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, because the West Yorkshire police knew that he was not the Ripper. Sutcliffe's crimes had been linked with the Ripper's murders, and after every Ripper murder Sutcliffe felt a terrible weight of guilt. He felt that he was being driven by the Devil himself. In the first month of 1980, he received three interviews from the police and he knew at that stage that they knew he was involved, but yet he was not arrested. In August that same year, Sutcliffe murdered Margo Walls in Pudsey. This murder was not regarded as a Ripper murder. In September he assaulted Dr. Bandara, a Chinese student in Leeds. In October he assaulted Maureen Lee in Leeds university. On November 5th he assaulted Teresa Sykes, a young housewife in Huddersfield. None of these assaults were regarded as Ripper attacks. Then, on November 17th, he murdered university student Jacqueline Hill. On the 19th of November The Daily Mail reported, "the body of a 20 year old girl student was found yesterday on waste ground in the heart of Yorkshire Ripper territory. At first detectives feared that he had claimed his 13th victim but a postmortem by pathologist Professor David Gee revealed nothing to link the murder with the mass killer. "This does not bear the hall marks of the Ripper" explained the police spokesman."

Read the newspaper articles "Another Maniac at large" and Sutcliffe's workmates.

Since the 16th of November 1979 the police knew the identity of the real Yorkshire Ripper and had a plan to trap him. Oldfield returned to share the glory.

This police strategy may shock some readers but I always sensed that this was their plan since they got the breakthrough tip-off from me on 16th November 1979. Oldfield and Co were confident of getting Tracey but wanted him with blood on his hands to make themselves the most famous cops in the world ever. What a capture it promised to be. An Irishman commuting to kill in England. They could expect knighthoods from the Queen and their memoirs would be hot property, classics in criminal history.

The Ripper Chiefs posing in their trophy room in 1980 waiting for their biggest prize.

One more prostitute victim couldn’t stand in their way. The deranged copycat killer could be forgotten about and picked up later quietly. Nobody would be very interested in him. David Yallop's research confirms this gut feeling of mine.They were waiting to trap him.

From Sutcliffe's three interviews in early 1980 they also knew his involvement, that he was the disturbed copycat killer. Naturally enough, Sutcliffe did not know that the police knew the Ripper's identity but he wanted to be arrested and give himself up as the Ripper. He told his boss at Clarke's before he broke up for Christmas, with tears in his eyes, that he might not be back, "I have things to do" he said. He also told his best friend Trevor Birdsall that he was the Ripper. Birdsall wrote a letter to the police identifying Sutcliffe. The police ignored his letter and he subsequently went to them with his girlfriend and he was again sidelined. The police didn't want Sutcliffe because they knew the Ripper's identity.

On the 2nd of January 1981, Peter Sutcliffe in his square shaped car, which was the subject of intense speculation since the Jacqueline Hill murder only six weeks earlier, with false number plates and a black prostitute, was parked suspiciously in the red light district of Sheffield. Just before he picked up Olivia Reivers, Sutcliffe phoned the police and reported himself as a suspicious customer. Only weeks earlier, he had turned Leeds into a ghost town with a tip off to the police, that the Ripper was going to strike again. On that day Sutcliffe went to Leeds from his own home town in Bradford. He had his wife in his car with the false number plates and his assortment of hammers, knives, screwdrivers and cord in his pockets. He wasn't arrested in the massive police dragnet that surrounded the city. George Oldfield wanted to get his hands on the Ripper very very badly. Sutcliffe was  unimportant.

I believe that Sutcliffe committed several other serious assaults and the murder of Mrs Clay who's body was found near the Dewsbury Ripper police headquarters. Detective Chief Superintendant Peter Gilrain was in charge of this investigation in addition to then being in overall charge of the Ripper investigation. These assaults and murders were played down by the police who had Tracey, the Real Yorkshire Ripper, the biggest prize of all in their sights.

Sutcliffe had been hanging about Sheffield for four days. When the Sheffield patrol car approached him, he did everything possible to arouse their suspicions, including giving them a false name and having false number plates that didn't tally with the tax disc on his car. He told the police patrol that he had stolen the number plates. He didn't want the prostitute for sex. He asked permission to relieve himself in the bushes and there he hid a hammer and a knife which were later recovered by the police. When he got to Hammerton Road police station in Sheffield, he planted another knife in the toilet cistern when he asked to go to the toilet again. This was found by policemen later on and created intense suspicion about him. A man who stank to high heaven because of the clothes he wore, a sweater pulled up where his underpants should be and calling himself by a false name, Peter Williams, and who had told the prostitute his name was Dave, and who was closely resembling Marilyn Moore's Dave, whose photofit picture was hanging on the wall of every police station, was guaranteed to arouse suspicions. The Leeds police were called and they told the Sheffield police that Peter Sutcliffe was not the Ripper. However the Sheffield police were not satisfied and wouldn't let him go so easily. They didn't know of George Oldfield's tactics and they insisted on Ripper squad involvement. When Sutcliffe was first brought into the Sheffield police station, he quickly told them that he had been a Ripper suspect. Later in Dewsbury he was interviewed by detective Sergeant Desmond O'Boyle. It didn't take much prompting for Sutcliffe to admit to the murder of Jacqueline Hill but Oldfield knew that already. The dilemma for the police was that they had said that Jacqueline Hill was a Ripper victim when they knew she was not. What a dilemma!! He also admitted to the murder of Margo Walls in Pudsey in 1980, and to all of his assaults. The police had to hold him. These admissions led to Ronald Gregory's press conference on January 4th.

Ronald Gregory nudges George Oldfield at a press conferance after Sutcliffe's
arrest as they embark on the biggest police cover up in criminal history.

Gregory told the media that a man had been arrested in Sheffield on Friday in connection with the theft of car number plates. He said. "This man is now detained in West Yorkshire and he is being questioned in connection to the Yorkshire Ripper murders". Asked if the hunt was being scaled down, Gregory replied, "You are right". Sutcliffe was headlined as the Ripper before he was even charged with any murder. The mass media had his face on every paper. The next day Sutcliffe was hustled into Dewsbury Court with a blanket over his head and he was charged with the murder of Jacqueline Hill and stealing a pair of number plates. Then the bargaining began and ultimately Sutcliffe admitted to most of the Ripper's murders.

 

The rest is history, all based on a false premise, and written about by newspapers over and over again, always giving the police version of events and never questioning the glaring inconsistencies.