LONDON – The British serial killer, known as the “Yorkshire Ripper” who spread terror and fear in northern England in the 1970s, died in a hospital on Friday at the age of 74.
Former grave digger Peter Sutcliffe was serving a life sentence simultaneously for killing 13 women in Yorkshire and northwest England between 1975 and 1980.
British media reported that he refused treatment after testing positive for Covid-19 and was suffering from a number of underlying health conditions. Her death will be investigated by the coroner.
Scliff’s barbaric attacks on young women were exacerbated by the incompetence of the police which prevented him from being arrested and continued the murder. The race for the Ripper was by far the largest known in the country, with nearly 25 million hours spent catching it. Document Commentaries have treated how the UK’s staunch investigators stuck to their principles, missing key leads, ignoring conflicting evidence and wasting time searching for the killer.
Although he was interviewed nine times during the investigation, Sutcliffe was only caught 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 the time of his trial. He was convicted of 13 counts of murder, seven counts of attempted murder and 20 counts of life imprisonment in London’s Central Criminal Court on May 22, 1981.
During his trial, Sutcliffe also expressed surprise that he was able to walk for so long.
“It was just a miracle that they hadn’t caught me before – they had all the facts,” he said.
The police immersed themselves in the information, and the card system they created was improperly cross-referenced, leaving key facts in the wrong place. Details about his appearance, such as the distance between his teeth and the size of seven feet, were not flagged.
During one of his interviews, officers showed Shutcliffe a picture of the Ripper’s boot print near his body but he failed to find out if he was actually wearing the shoes in question.
In another bug, a victim, who survived a head-on collision with Marcela Claxton, was able to help police create an image of the suspect that later proved accurate. But her testimony was acquitted by the police, who thought she was not a Ripper victim because she was not a prostitute, as were some of her other victims.
After convicting him, Sutcliffe spent a long time in Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire. He was transferred to HMP Frankland in 2016 after being deemed stable enough to spend time in prison.
A spokesman for the prison service said: “HMP Frankland prisoner Peter Kunnan (born Sutcliffe) died at the hospital on November 13. The prison and probation ombudsman has been notified.”
Schcliffe is reported to have had poor health before his death, including heart problems, diabetes and obesity.
