ABSTRACT
Between 1975 and 1980 Peter Sutcliffe, a lorry driver living in Bradford, West Yorkshire, attacked and murdered women, some of whom were sex workers. Most of his known crimes were committed in Yorkshire, hence the sobriquet he acquired long before his arrest – ‘the Yorkshire Ripper’. The West Yorkshire police wrongly assumed that the culprit they sought was primarily motivated by hatred of prostitutes; when other, ‘innocent women’ were also attacked, intense fear and anger was felt by numerous women living in the area, and public disquiet with the failure of the police investigation became increasingly vociferous. The investigation was also seriously misdirected in the last three years by hoax letters and a tape made by someone with a strong ‘Geordie’ accent, who claimed to be the murderer, so convincing the police that the killer was from the North East. 1 Sutcliffe was eventually arrested in January 1981, subsequently confessing to killing 13 women and attempting to murder another eight. At trial he pleaded not guilty to murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility, claiming to have heard the voice of God directing him to kill prostitutes. Sutcliffe's defence claimed that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, genuinely believed he heard such ‘voices’ and was therefore insane, not guilty of murder. This defence was rejected by the jury, finding Sutcliffe guilty of murder, although psychiatrists later reiterated their diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, whereupon he was transferred to Broadmoor, where he remains.
