Peter Sutcliffe

Peter William Sutcliffe (born 2 June 1946) is a British serial killer who was dubbed “The Yorkshire Ripper”. In 1981 Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attacking seven others. He is currently serving 20 sentences of life imprisonment in Broadmoor Hospital. After his conviction, Peter Sutcliffe began using his mother’s maiden name and became known as Peter William Coonan. A High Court ruling rejected an appeal in 2010, confirming that he would serve a whole life tariff and would never be released from imprisonment.
Peter Sutcliffe was born in Bingley, to a working-class Catholic family in West Riding of Yorkshire, a son of John Sutcliffe (11 December 1922 – June 2004) and Kathleen Frances Sutcliffe (née Coonan, 22 January 1919 – 1978). Reportedly a loner at school, he left at the age of 15 and took a series of menial jobs, including two stints as a gravedigger during the 1960s. Between November 1971 and April 1973 Sutcliffe worked at the factory of Baird Television Ltd, on the packaging line. He left when he was asked to go on the road as a salesman.

After leaving Baird, he worked nightshifts at the Britannia Works of Anderton International from April 1973. In February 1975 he took redundancy, used the pay-off to gain an HGV licence on 4 June 1975 and began working as a driver for a tyre firm on 29 September of that year. On 5 March 1976 he was dismissed for the theft of used tyres. He was unemployed until October 1976, when he found another job as an HGV driver for T & WH Clark (Holdings Ltd.) on the Canal Road Industrial Estate in Bradford. Sutcliffe frequently used prostitutes as a young man and it has been speculated that a bad experience with one during which he was believed to have been conned out of money, helped fuel his violent hatred of women.

He first met Sonia Szurma on 14 February 1967; they married on 10 August 1974. His wife suffered several miscarriages over the following few years and the couple were subsequently informed that she would not be able to have children. Shortly after this, she resumed a teacher training course. When she completed the course in 1977 and began teaching, the couple used the salary from her job to buy their first house in Heaton, Bradford, where they moved on 26 September 1977, and where they were still living at the time of Sutcliffe’s arrest.

Peter Sutcliffe – Murder Charges.   His mission from God lies.

Peter Sutcliffe, a disturbed copycat killer who had been eliminated more than a dozen times by Ripper squad detectives confessed in a deal for leniency to nine of the murders committed by the Real Ripper, Billy Tracey, plus his own three copycat murders, namely Jean Jordan, Yvonne Pearson and Jacqueline Hill, which three killings were in the Ripper frame at the time of his arrest. He also confessed to the murder of Margo Walls which was not in the Ripper frame and he was convicted by the court after a trial of his sanity to determine if a jury would accept his pleas of diminished responsibility which would allow him to go to a mental hospital without a trial in return for his confessions to murdering these 13 victims. He also pleaded guilty to assaults on seven women some of which had been wrongly linked to the Ripper murders by police who thought the Ripper may have been disturbed before he finished his intended murder and some of these victims recognised Sutcliffe on his arrest which helped to convince the public that he was indeed the Ripper.

Date	Name of victim	Age at death	Body found at the location
30 October 1975	Wilma McCann	28	Prince Phillip Playing Fields, Leeds 53.8178°N 1.5428°W
20 January 1976	Emily Jackson	42	Manor Street, Sheepscar, Leeds 53.8083°N 1.5311°W
5 February 1977	Irene Richardson	28	Roundhay Park, Leeds 53.8334°N 1.5002°W
23 April 1977	Tina Atkinson	32	Flat 3, 9 Oak Avenue, Bradford 53.8109°N 1.7633°W
26 June 1977	Jayne MacDonald	16	Adventure playground, Reginald Street, Leeds 53.8179°N 1.5325°W
1 October 1977	Jean Jordan	20	Allotments next to Southern Cemetery, Manchester 53.4324°N 2.2506°W
21 January 1978	Yvonne Pearson	21	Under a discarded sofa on waste ground off Arthington Street, Bradford 53.8001°N 1.7721°W
31 January 1978	Helen Rytka	18	Timber yard in Great Northern Street, Huddersfield 53.6544°N 1.7800°W
16 May 1978	Vera Millward	40	Grounds of Manchester Royal Infirmary 53.4599°N 2.2225°W
4 April 1979	Josephine Whitaker	19	Savile Park, Halifax 53.7117°N 1.8736°W
2 September 1979	Barbara Leach	20	Back of 13 Ash Grove, Bradford 53.7900°N 1.7640°W
20 August 1980	Margo Walls	37	Garden of a house called “Claremont”, New Street, Farsley, Leeds 53.8085°N 1.6715°W
17 November 1980	Jacqueline Hill	20	Waste ground off Alma Road, Headingley, Leeds 53.8228°N 1.5781°W