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The British serial killer known as the “Yorkshire Ripper”, a man who instilled terror and fear in northern England in the 1970s, died on Friday (local time) at a hospital there. He was 74 years old.
Peter Sutcliffe, a grave digger, was serving simultaneous life sentences for killing 13 women in Yorkshire and North West England between 1975 and 1980.
British media reported that he had refused treatment after testing positive for Covid-19 and suffered from a number of underlying health conditions. His death will be investigated by the coroner.
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British serial killer Peter Sutcliffe in police custody in 1983.
Sutcliffe’s barbaric attacks on young women were compounded by police incompetence that allowed him to evade arrest and continue to kill. The Ripper chase was one of the largest the country had ever seen, with some 2.5 million hours spent trying to catch him.
Documentaries have chronicled how stubborn UK investigators stuck to their theories, omitting key clues, ignoring conflicting evidence and wasting time searching for the killer.
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Although he was interviewed nine times in the investigation, Sutcliffe was only caught after being found with a prostitute in his car.
He was arrested on January 2, 1981 in the English city of Sheffield, and later confessed, although he denied it at his trial. He was convicted on May 22, 1981 at the Central Criminal Court in London on 13 counts of murder, seven cases of attempted murder and was sentenced to 20 simultaneous life sentences.
During his trial, even Sutcliffe expressed surprise that he was able to continue for so long.
“It was a miracle that they didn’t stop me before, they had all the facts,” he said.
The police had been overwhelmed by the information, and a card system they created had incorrect cross-references, causing key data to be lost. Details about his appearance, such as a gap in his teeth and seven-foot size, were not marked.
During one of his interviews, officers showed Sutcliffe a photo of the Ripper’s boot print near a body, but did not realize that he was actually wearing the boots in question.
Pyne / AP
Peter William Sutcliffe is thrown out of court by police officers.
In another mistake, a victim who survived a blow to the head with a hammer, Marcella Claxton, was able to help police produce a picture of the suspect that later turned out to be accurate.
But her testimony was dismissed by police, who thought she was not a Ripper victim because she was not a prostitute, like some of her other victims.
After being convicted, Sutcliffe spent a lot of time at Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire. He was transferred to HMP Frankland in 2016 after being deemed stable enough to serve a prison sentence.
A Prison Service spokesman said: “HMP Frankland inmate Peter Coonan (born Sutcliffe) died in hospital on November 13. The Ombudsman for Prisons and Parole was reported.”
Sutcliffe reportedly suffered from a variety of health problems before his death, including heart problems, diabetes, and obesity.
