Original subtitles

Police are investigating the discovery of a woman's body

on a playing field in the Chapeltown district of Leeds.

She'd been battered savagely about the head with a blunt instrument

and stabbed many times...

She'd been attacked in similar circumstances to the other victims.

And, like most of them, she'd been a prostitute.

Between 1975 and 1981,

a series of horrific murders in the north of England

would lead to the biggest manhunt in British criminal history.

In every community this horrendous killer had visited,

everybody felt the chill.

It destroyed all our lives, because we were living in fear.

Over five years, the killer, dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper,

murdered 13 women and brutally attacked at least eight others.

I just remember all these hammer blows laying on my head.

About five hammer blows.

Even with his voice on tape, his handwriting

and the evidence of 12 murders, they still don't know who he is.

SIREN WAILS

In the aftermath, it emerged that the killer was questioned

by police nine times over those five years.

But each time, they let him go,

leaving him free to kill again and again.

As time went on and he wasn't being caught,

everybody was concerned that we could be missing something here.

ANGRY SHOUTS

My name is Liza Williams.

I'm a film-maker who grew up in the North

and heard stories about the Yorkshire Ripper.

Now I want to go back 40 years,

to look at this case with fresh eyes

to find out what went so wrong,

and how the attitudes of 1970s Yorkshire shaped the investigation.

Most of his victims have been of somewhat doubtful character.

A bad man's a bad man, but a bad woman's a bloody woman.

By 1979, nine women were dead

and the murderer was now Britain's most prolific serial killer.

I hope that we can draw this to a conclusion

without anyone else having to die.

Because most of the previous attacks had happened in red-light areas

and many of the victims were sex workers,

the police had decided the killer was motivated

by a hatred of prostitutes.

We're quite certain that this man hates prostitution.

In this episode, I want to look more closely at the police.

As the murders continued,

did their theory take them any closer to catching the Ripper?

I just used to come out of press conferences thinking,

"They haven't got a hope in hell. They're not going to catch him."

Or did their instincts lead them astray,

derailing the investigation, with deadly consequences?

RECORDING: You are no nearer to catching me now

than four years ago, when I started.

At 6:30 this morning, the body of a 19-year-old girl

was found on playing fields in Halifax.

In April 1979, the body of the Yorkshire Ripper's tenth victim

was found in a park in Halifax.

The latest Ripper murder differs from the rest, in that the killer

struck within a quiet middle-class housing area.

The body was found by a woman in Savile Park,

one of Halifax's most exclusive residential areas.

Josephine Whitaker was a 19-year-old bank clerk

who lived with her parents in a genteel suburb of Halifax.

So we're driving around Savile Park in Halifax at the moment.

On the morning Josephine's body was found,

forensic scientist Angela Gallop was called to the scene to aid police.

I've come back to Halifax with her to find out what she remembers.

I think there are some things that sort of burn themselves into your memory.

One of the Ripper scenes was the first crime scene,

the first murder scene that I've ever been to,

and the first time I'd seen a dead body.

And so, of course, things like that, you don't forget.

Just like all the other victims,

Josephine had been hit over the head with a hammer.

She had been stabbed 25 times with a screwdriver

in the chest, abdomen and leg.

Because of deep scrape marks in the grass, police believe

she was attacked at the roadside

and dragged to where her body was found.

We've got an open mind on it, whether it's a victim

of our friend, the so-called Ripper,

or whether it's something else.

It's incredibly open.

It is, and I think that was the first thing that, um...

struck us when we came here, just how open it was.

And just, you know, how much of a nerve you'd have to have

to carry out an absolutely appalling attack

on someone in an area like this.

I remember there were a bank of press photographers.

They were a long way away, but you could see

these massive, great lenses you could just about make out.

I-I just remember that.

Was it Ivy Street? Yeah. That's just down there.

So it's very close. Really close to the park, isn't it?

So she must have been very nearly home.

Josephine was within 200 yards of her home when she was attacked

and dragged onto a playing field.

Up until this point, every murder had taken place in or near

the red-light districts of Leeds,

Manchester, Bradford and Huddersfield.

I want to know how the death of Josephine

affected the police and the public.

We're all...? Yeah, all good, yeah. Great.

Ruth Bundey was a lawyer in Leeds

who represented sex workers in court.

Things got ramped up when it wasn't a prostitute who died.

That was... that was when things got ramped up.

The police, in common with all levels of society at the time,

became extremely anxious about the state of affairs

when somebody was killed who was "respectable".

And the police felt that the public would be looking at them

to move a little bit faster now.

Opening the inquest on the latest victim,

19-year-old building society clerk Josephine Whitaker,

the coroner gave permission for the body to be buried.

And as he adjourned the inquest, he said it was right he should say

she was not of the same character as a number of the other victims.

And it wasn't just the coroner.

I found newspapers paid particular attention to Josephine's background

and the fact that she was deemed respectable.

Her murder prompted outrage and widespread fear.

It feels very different to the treatment

of many of the previous murder victims.

Mr Oldfield, the fact that you're involved has made people think

that possibly she's the latest Ripper victim.

Well, until we've made a lot more inquiries,

it's very early doors yet.

The Assistant Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, George Oldfield,

had been heading up what became known as the Ripper Squad for the past two years.

If there is a link, then it would appear that once again,

he has made a mistake, because...

..er... Miss Whitaker was a very respectable young lady.

Er... whereas most of his victims, er...

have been of somewhat doubtful moral character.

Oldfield was firmly of the belief that the Ripper was on a mission

to kill prostitutes.

And even after the murder of Josephine,

it seems he wasn't going to change his mind.

Instead, he said he thought

the Ripper had killed Josephine by mistake.

Oldfield seemed so certain about everything.

I want to know what he was like to work for.

Superintendent Frank Morritt

reported directly to George Oldfield.

What was George like as a senior officer?

George was a blunt Yorkshireman.

If he wanted to tell you it was X, it was X.

No argument with Mr Oldfield.

He'd make a decision and that was it.

Did he listen enough?

I think he listened, yes, er...

and at the end of the day, he came to his own opinion.

And having come to that opinion, that was it, get on with it.

Chris Gregg was a junior detective in 1979.

The Ripper inquiry was his first major case.

What was it like back then?

This was a world where the people who were in charge

as your supervisors, a lot of them had seen service in the war,

and they expected things to be done their way.

It was quite macho, the culture.

There was a high turnover.

Well, you'd sink or swim.

Some didn't make it, for all sorts of reasons.

And, um... you know, there was no hesitation.

You're out of the door.

About turn!

Along with a culture of rigid hierarchies,

murder investigations in the 1970s

had none of the forensic tools that the police rely on today.

With no DNA fingerprinting or CCTV,

all they could do was scour each crime scene for evidence,

or search for eyewitnesses.

325, can you do me a 1017, please?

And key pieces of evidence had been discovered.

In 1977, in Roundhay Park, Leeds,

the impression of a car tyre track had been left in the mud

close to the body of the Ripper's third victim, Irene Richardson.

Officers suspected it had been left by the killer's car.

It would turn out three years later they were right.

An inquiry was set up to identify the vehicle and find the driver.

Can you follow in, please?

The tyre-tracking inquiry teams did a great job

in narrowing down as far as they could

the type of vehicle those tyres could have come from.

It was a superb piece of detective work.

And it was a brave line of inquiry to start, because it was huge.

There were 51 different makes of car that could have had the tyres in question,

which meant the police had 53,000 cars to check in West Yorkshire.

As well as all the follow-up work of getting alibis from each driver

whose car had the right tyres.

Is there any other way we can trace him?

In just four months, they'd managed to examine and rule out 33,000 cars,

and had only 20,000 left to check,

but then Oldfield called the investigation off.

He said resources were too stretched to continue.

Why would he do that?

It had gone on for so long, for so many deaths, for so many attacks

that the weight of paperwork alone was so great

that we had to have the floor of the room reinforced.

So evidence became a burden, rather than an advantage.

But in June 1979, when Oldfield was sent a package personally addressed to him,

he started a new line of inquiry

that would swallow up more time and money

than anything the police had pursued to date.

And this time, resources didn't seem to matter.

We'd normally come back for a debriefing about 9:00pm every night.

And we were called in about 7:00,

and we were actually doing the briefings at the courtroom.

I was one of 200 people in the courtroom

and we were in the gallery at the top.

George Oldfield was centre stage.

He was sitting on the magistrate's bench,

and Dick Holland was sat alongside him,

and they had a tape recorder.

RECORDING: I'm Jack.

I have the greatest respect, for you, George,

but, Lord, you are no nearer catching me now

than four years ago, when I started.

I reckon your boys are letting you down, George.

They can't be much good, can they?

He explained that he believed it was

from the person responsible for the murders.

And we all had to listen very carefully

to see if we recognised the voice from someone we'd questioned.

You could have heard a pin drop.

RECORDING: I'm not quite sure when I'll strike again,

but it will be definitely some time this year.

Maybe September, October.

Even sooner, if I get the chance.

Maybe Manchester. I like it there.

There's plenty of them knocking about.

When the soft Geordie voice was being spoken,

that suddenly was the voice of the killer.

And the whole emphasis of the investigation

changed almost overnight.

In fact, it turned out that over the previous year,

George Oldfield had also received two letters from the man

calling himself Jack the Ripper.

Because the tape and letters all had the same Sunderland postmark,

the local force, Northumbria Police, were drafted in to help.

You'll want a voice test first, will you? Yeah, we'll do that.

Detective Inspector David Zackrisson was on the team.

We went down to Halifax and saw Mr Oldfield

and Detective Superintendent Dick Holland.

We didn't see the letters,

but he did open his drawer and tapped inside

and said, "They're here.

"And from the contents of the letter, I'm fairly certain

"he's the man who's been killing women throughout West Yorkshire."

But he didn't let you see the letters?

No, he certainly didn't.

It almost conjured up a sort of aura about the letters,

that these things really are dynamite.

They're that good, they can't see the light of day.

At this point, Oldfield refused to share the full content of the letters

with his fellow officers from Northumbria,

but he did give them to a handwriting analyst.

Parts of the letters contain details police want kept secret,

but top graphologist Diane Simpson has read all of them.

There's violence right the way through in the pressures.

So, this is no hoax, this is a genuine violent man, you think?

This man is a very dangerous man.

In any case, this is very much a violent man.

For Oldfield, all the evidence pointed to the fact

that the letters and tape really were from the killer.

So he decided to go public with them.

There was a policy conference between myself and my team,

George Overland and Jim Hobson.

We've got the tape, we've got the letters,

if we release it, the public, at least, can respond to it.

And the decision was made that we're not justified in keeping it secret.

If we keep this quiet and it's true it is him

and more people killed, where will we stand then?

Jeremy Thompson had been covering the case for local TV news

for the past four years

when he got a call to a special press conference.

We had no idea what was coming up in that press conference.

We were just greeted by a much bigger show of detectives

on the platform in front of us,

so we thought something must be up.

And then this very old-fashioned tape recorder, as it was,

and Oldfield needed some help to press the buttons to get it going.

And we heard this... this north-eastern voice saying,

"I'm Jack".

RECORDING: I see you are still having no luck catching me.

I have the greatest respect for you, George, but, Lord,

at the rate I'm going, I should be in the book of records.

I think it's 11 up to now, isn't it?

Well, I'll keep on going for quite a while yet.

It was such a strange accent, as well. Such a strange accent, yeah.

Diana Muir and Dee Marshall were both working as local journalists

in Leeds when the tape was released.

Because everybody assumed it was a local person,

you know, the Ripper was from Yorkshire,

and then this tape turned up.

And the dialect expert said he was from Wearside.

Not even just the Northeast, they said he was from Wearside.

I think everybody thought for a moment, "This could be the bloke.

"This could be the bloke daring to taunt the detectives behind it."

RECORDING: They never learn, do they, George?

When he called him by his name... Yeah.

We were all, like, "Whoa!" Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is... this is now, this whole...

Personal... ..story is taking a new twist

because it's becoming very personal between

George and the Yorkshire Ripper, which it did become.

I'm struck by Oldfield's total faith in the tape and letters.

What does it say about him?

In 1979, Joan Smith was a young Sunday Times reporter.

You know, the whole saga of the tape tells you a lot about that case

because it appealed to the vanity of George Oldfield.

He was absolutely convinced that the murderer was trying to contact him

and that he's... The murderer saw it as a battle of wits.

Let's not forget this, that the chap who we're seeking

is a cool, intelligent, cunning individual.

He's absolutely fearless.

Whether it is a personal challenge, I don't know.

Certainly, we are looking for an unusual character.

By calling himself Jack the Ripper,

the man on the tape confirmed the police's theory about the killer,

echoing their belief that he was on a mission

to rid the streets of prostitutes.

I want to know if survivors of Ripper assaults

were consulted about the tape.

Olive Smelt had been attacked in 1975.

Her daughter Julie was 15 at the time,

and remembers her mum's account of that night vividly.

She said, "Just from nowhere, this person appeared".

She said, "And I thought, where the hell's he come from?"

And he just said to her, "Well, it looks like t'weather's broke".

Because we'd had an amazing hot summer in '75.

It was the hottest we'd had for years and years.

He says, "It looks like t'weather's broke, don't it?"

So he actually spoke to my mum.

And she said, "Yes". And that's the last thing she remembers.

And she always stood by and said... "It's not a Geordie.

"That person that spoke to me did not have a Geordie accent.

"He was a local Yorkshireman with dark hair."

And did the police speak to her about that? Did the police ask her?

Yeah.

So, the police had asked her and she told them that it wasn't a Geordie?

Mm. Over and over and over again.

"Well, I'm telling you, that's not the person that spoke to me!"

And they didn't listen to her? No.

I'm going to see Tracy Browne again.

She was also attacked in 1975, when she was just 14.

Her attack had all the characteristics of the Ripper,

but the police didn't believe it was him.

As with Olive, her attacker spoke to her

and she heard his voice clearly.

One day, George Oldfield came up to the farm to play me that tape.

George Oldfield came to speak to you about the tape? Yeah. Yes.

What did you think when you heard it?

Well, to me, it was just obvious it wasn't him.

And so the more that I kept saying, no, it wasn't him,

the more incensed he was getting

because I wasn't telling him what he wanted to hear.

You could see the frustration on his face, and his mannerisms

and his body language and everything.

He obviously really wanted to believe that that was him.

Yeah. Yeah, he did.

But I was telling him otherwise, that it wasn't.

And he didn't like that.

It just strikes me as weird that you would come and speak to an eyewitness

with a preconceived idea of what you wanted them to say. Yes.

He was trying to put words into my mouth.

It does make you second-guess yourself sometimes,

but it was definitely a Yorkshire accent, not a Geordie.

No chance. No way. Not in a million years.

So key witnesses told police the voice on the tape

was not the voice of the killer.

But did anyone inside the police have doubts?

One month after David Zackrisson was first told by Oldfield about the letters,

his department insisted on seeing them in full.

And I've often tried to recapture that moment when I read them

and how would I describe it.

And it was a bit of an anti-climax.

I expected him to say,

"Oh, did you see what I did with such-and-such body?"

Something only the murderer would know. Only the murderer would know.

But there was nothing there.

But is there anything on the tape, Mr Oldfield...

What in particular convinces you, from what is on the tape,

that this is the man who has killed 11 women?

Er... well, when one listens to the tape

and, er... compares that with the letters that we've had,

then it leaves me in no doubt.

What was it the letters said that convinced Oldfield

the author knew things that weren't public knowledge?

Mr Oldfield, er...

he mentioned the writer had said that one of the victims

who had been murdered in Manchester

had, in fact, received treatment at the hospital

where her body was found.

And we were assured that that had never been made public.

But some of those covering the case knew otherwise.

But that was in the public domain.

It had been in, um... I think it had been in the Daily Mail.

It was certainly in the cuttings.

But, you know, me, a very young reporter,

saying to the head of the Ripper Squad in Manchester,

"I know this case, and there is nothing on this tape

"that isn't already in the public domain".

Wouldn't listen to that.

Wrong voice, wrong sex.

It was senior police officers and crime correspondents

discussing a mythic figure that they'd cooked up between them.

I think they were completely oblivious to the kind of, um... biases they had.

Two people, Dick Holland and George Oldfield,

had convinced themselves

that this was the killer sending the communications.

But they were only looking for positives.

Aspects of the letters and tape

that fitted their conceptions.

This correspondence has been the Holy Grail

that had the answer.

That had the solution, that had the means

to bring all this to the end.

Zackrisson told me he submitted a formal report

outlining his concerns about the tape and letters,

and the fact they held no information that wasn't already publicly known.

But clearly, he was ignored.

Before, we know we've been looking for a man.

We didn't know where he came from.

But now that we can localise the area,

the field has narrowed appreciably, as I'm sure you must agree.

Even though no survivor remembered hearing a Sunderland accent,

and Zackrisson had raised concerns,

Oldfield insisted on keeping the tape and letters

at the centre of the investigation.

Leading the hunt turned into a personal vendetta for George Oldfield.

He was working an 18-hour day, and the strain took its toll.

RECORDING: Well, it's been nice talking to you, George.

Yours, Jack the Ripper.

In August 1979, Oldfield fell seriously ill.

He'd suffered a heart attack

and went on sick leave for five months.

Barbara Leach left the Mannville Arms on Great Horton Road

at 1:00 on Sunday morning.

She'd been friendly with the landlord...

Four weeks later, 20-year-old university student Barbara Leach

was murdered in the early hours on her way home from a pub in Bradford.

She was hit over the head with a hammer and stabbed.

Like Josephine Whitaker, she had no link to prostitution

and was murdered nowhere near a red-light district.

Her house in Ash Grove is only 150 yards around the corner,

yet Barbara chose to leave her friends

and walk on alone, in the dark.

Somewhere along the way, she met the man they call the Yorkshire Ripper.

Um... I don't... like to think of what I'm losing.

No, nothing can compensate us for the loss of Barbara.

The Ripper, in the tape-recorded message, had warned

that he would strike again, possibly in September or October.

Were you prepared for this?

Well, of course, we can't cater for the, er... killing

of the... odd female at any time.

What's worrying the police is that despite the Ripper's last warning,

he was still able to strike again.

The truth is, they couldn't do much to stop him.

For, even with his voice on tape, his handwriting

and the evidence of 12 murders, they still don't know who he is.

All that's left to them is optimism and persistence.

After the murder of Barbara Leach, the police acknowledged

that all women were at risk,

not just those involved in prostitution.

But this didn't change the direction of the investigation.

With Oldfield on sick leave,

his boss, Chief Constable Ron Gregory, took charge

and launched a huge publicity campaign to find the man

behind the letters and tape.

Exhibition spaces were set up, with the tag line

"Flush Out The Ripper".

Samples of the handwriting were widely circulated,

and there was even a free phone number for the public to call

to see if they recognised the voice.

MUSIC: Call Me by Blondie

West Yorkshire Police yesterday launched

a massive advertising campaign

which is unprecedented, or perceived to be, in criminal history,

as an attempt to catch Britain's most wanted criminal, the Yorkshire Ripper,

where previously, more conventional detective methods

seem so far to have failed.

In 1979, Andrew Sheldon was a junior reporter

on the Yorkshire Evening Post.

West Yorkshire Police said, "We're going to

put some money behind an advertising campaign.

"We're going to bring together the key clues we've got.

"We've got some handwriting, we've got this voice taping.

"We're going to get it out to as many people as possible."

That was quite innovative thinking, I think, on their part.

The men on the Ripper campaign have persuaded the media

to donate nearly �1 million worth of space.

We'd got lots of help, lots of publicity, both media,

and lots and lots of recordings of it

to go around pubs and clubs and all the rest of it.

HUBBUB Could we have some quiet, please?

Thank you, David. The police inspector behind me

has come about the Yorkshire Ripper.

Thank you. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your attention.

I've come here tonight to play you a tape of the man who we believe

to be the so-called Yorkshire Ripper.

RECORDING: I should be in the book of records.

I think it's 11 now, isn't it?

Well, I'll keep on going for quite a while yet.

I cant see myself being nicked just yet.

Richard McCann's mother, Wilma,

was the first woman to be murdered by the Ripper.

I've got a distinct memory of going to visit the local working men's club,

and I remember hearing the voice. I remember thinking,

"That's the man that killed my mum".

RECORDING: Sorry it wasn't Bradford.

I did promise you that, but I couldn't get there.

I was scared. Not of all men, just...

I was listening out, if I saw a man, I'd listen out for this Geordie accent.

RECORDING: I'm not quite sure when I'll strike again, but...

So you have the total and utter conviction

the voice on the tape is the killer.

So if you hear that, you're in danger.

If you don't hear it, maybe you're not in danger.

RECORDING: You are no nearer catching me now

than four years ago, when I started.

I reckon your boys are letting you down, George...

Since the publicity campaign started three weeks ago,

14,000 calls have flooded into the seven Ripper incident rooms.

We had correspondence coming in from Africa,

from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, France, Germany,

Hong Kong, New Zealand, Canada.

You had to follow them up.

So, yes, the direction of the inquiry was diverted,

in manpower terms, particularly.

West Yorkshire Police spent �20,000 on publicity alone,

and two million people called their free phone line.

All the interest created massive amounts of follow-up work

for an investigation that was already stretched.

And as he voice of Wearside Jack was heard across the country,

the killer became a figure of public fascination.

The failure of the police to find him merely magnifies and expands

the myth surrounding the person.

Myth is created by a lack of knowledge,

and so the myth that grew up around the Yorkshire Ripper

magnified, intensified, multiplied

by every day that he wasn't caught.

By every crime that he committed.

Meanwhile, at number 18, they're a Killer On The Loose -

it's Thin Lizzy!

? There's a killer on the loose again

? A killer on the loose

? There's a killer on the loose again

? A lady-killer on the loose. ?

It's the worst series of unsolved killings in the world,

and newsmen from five continents have moved in in search of an angle.

Stop about here, you reckon?

What is the interest to Japanese people of a story like this?

Um... I think why these sort of awful affairs happen

in this peaceful country.

This crew have come from Australia to Bradford.

The Ripper has obviously had quite an enormous impact

on the towns in this region.

What surprised me, some people talk about him with affection, almost.

? Don't unzip your zipper

? Cos you know I'm Jack the Ripper. ?

I've read about these football chants,

but it's shocking to actually hear them.

They really happened.

In a dreadful kind of way,

the Ripper has almost become part of Northern folklore.

I've come to meet Jalna Hanmer.

She was a social science lecturer in the 1970s.

I want to find out more about how fascination with the Ripper

worked its way into everyday life.

Shortly after the attacks, Jalna carried out research

into harassment of women on the streets of Leeds.

She's still got her original report.

READS: If you go around arm in arm,

you get a lot of obscene suggestions.

I was in the road and a man said, "You need a fuck".

One evening recently, a man yelled at me that I was a whore

for walking around at that time of night on my own.

Men and cars driving past would say things like,

"Are you looking for Jack tonight?

"Why don't you come with me instead?"

There was definitely a lot more of it during the Ripper scare.

So, women suffered more harassment during the Ripper scare, is that what you found?

Yes. There was definitely more of it.

The Ripper gave them an excuse to say things.

That they felt they could get away with it.

Police know who the dead woman is, but haven't yet named her.

She was found under grass cuttings at the home of the local...

They think that the attacker may have followed Miss Walls,

or he may have lain in wait.

Either way, a violent and probably very noisy attack took place.

In August 1980, the body of 42-year-old social worker Marguerite Walls

was discovered in a small town between Bradford and Leeds.

On her way home from work at around 10:00pm,

the killer hit her over the head with a hammer

and strangled her with a rope.

Marguerite was the 12th murder victim,

and the third in a row who had no link to prostitution.

But the police investigation continued down the same track

to find the author of the tape and letters.

A man who called himself Jack the Ripper.

KNOCK AT DOOR

Is your husband in at the moment? Yes.

We're making inquiries about Jack the Ripper.

I have a copy of some handwriting here.

I wonder if you could just have a look at it and see...

By this point, almost 40,000 people had been interviewed

in an attempt to identify the voice on the tape.

And Northumbria Police alone had spent more than �600,000

on the search for the man who had written to George Oldfield.

No, it doesn't mean nothing to me, that.

Mrs Fern, can you have a look?

Sections of the letters were shown to people across the Northeast,

and all suspects were asked to provide handwriting samples.

I think our best chance of catching this man is for somebody

to recognise that handwriting.

I really can't understand

why some person hasn't recognised that writing.

Because in all families, people know each other's writing, don't they?

Yes, it was an elimination criteria.

"Give me a sample of your handwriting."

There's the handwriting, nothing like it.

OK, put it down as file and away it goes.

While the police were no closer to catching the killer,

the tape and letters were still driving

almost every aspect of the investigation.

But there were other leads.

A newly-printed �5 note had been found

in the handbag of Jean Jordan,

the Ripper's sixth victim, killed in Manchester.

Officers thought it could have been given to Jean by the murderer

before he attacked her.

We have established that that �5 note

was released into circulation on 27th September,

which was only four days before this young lady met her death.

And we have established that it went to one of three banks

in the Bradford, Shipley and Bingley area.

Once the police had narrowed down the possible bank branches,

they were able to track the local companies

that might have been issued the new note

and draw up a list of all the men

who could have received it in their pay packet.

And in January 1980, Manchester officers narrowed down

the possible suspects to just 241 men.

Jack Ridgeway, the senior investigating officer,

narrowed that down with the limitations they had at the time,

working with the banking serial numbers,

but they did a brilliant job working out

the killer had been paid that at Clarke's Haulage

as part of the payroll run.

Ridgeway's team had him in their net,

you know, through the work that they did.

Could it have caught him?

Yes. Did it?

No, but it should have done.

So that line of inquiry could have got the killer?

Yeah. The information was there.

But the suspect's handwriting was compared to the letters

as part of the elimination process.

The tape and letters were driving the investigation yet again,

even though there was no proof they really came from the killer.

Dick Holland and George Oldfield truly believed

that, um... the author of the tape

and the letters was the killer.

So, very much a decision made at the top?

Yes, a decision made at the top,

um... and I think, you know,

Dick Holland, George Oldfield, would, um...

..in hindsight, concede that was a catastrophic mistake.

Between September and November 1980, there were three more attacks.

Just a month after the murder of Marguerite Walls,

34-year-old Dr Upadhya Bandara, in the UK on a visit from Singapore,

was attacked in Headingley, Leeds.

The next month, Maureen Lea, a third-year art student,

was hit over the head with a hammer in the grounds of Leeds University.

And then on Bonfire Night,

16-year-old Theresa Sykes was attacked in Huddersfield.

In each case, the Ripper was disturbed by passers-by

and all three women survived.

Just 12 days later, the killer struck again.

Yorkshire Police say they believe the killer,

known as the Yorkshire Ripper, has claimed his 13th victim.

Now, what every police force in the North feared would happen has happened.

The Yorkshire Ripper has struck again.

Two days ago, the body of a 20-year-old

third-year English student, Jacqueline Hill,

was discovered behind the Arndale Centre in Headingley.

Jacqueline Hill, a 20-year-old student from the Middlesbrough area,

was killed in Headingley yesterday.

Jacqueline Hill was killed on her way home to her student halls.

Just could not believe it was our daughter and she was dead.

I'm afraid I broke down and had to be taken away from her.

I didn't want to leave.

I wanted to bring her home.

I keep... hoping

perhaps at the weekend, she's coming back.

At the time, I was a volunteer with the Probation Service,

and Jacqueline Hill, as a student,

had applied to be a probation volunteer

and she had come to her first meeting.

And we would always go and have a pint at the end of the meeting,

and Jacqueline was invited to come with us.

She said, no, she needed to go back to her student lodging.

"I'll get on the bus", which took her to the end of her road.

When Jacqueline got off the bus here in Headingley,

police believe it was about 9:20 on Monday night.

A 300-yard walk, or more, perhaps, to her halls of residence.

To our everlasting shame, it never occurred to any of us

that this was a risky thing for her to do.

Jacqueline would have been walking up here, if she'd taken this route,

towards Lupton Flats, which are just here.

But her body was discovered on this stretch of wasteland here,

underneath the dark tarpaulins there.

Only a matter of 100 yards or so from Lupton Flats,

where she was a third-year French student,

obviously working hard for her final exams.

73!

What was the feeling in Leeds after Jacqueline was killed?

Well, that this was... SHE SIGHS

This was just getting too much.

If somebody could... could be killed

at 9:15 in the evening

in a reasonably busy area,

this just took it up a level.

This has got to stop.

INDISTINCT CHANTING

..to be concerned about women being murdered!

Five years is too long. It's been going on too long.

If they haven't caught him yet, I don't think they ever will.

Pretty awful. Scared. We're very scared.

We're not going to go out again on our own.

From now on, you're not going to be coming out at all?

No. Not if we can help it.

It's hard to describe that atmosphere of fear,

that blanket of fear

that descended on the north of England.

My wife and every other woman I knew

was scared to go out at night.

I was working in a newsroom

and each time we heard that another murder had been committed,

everybody was... It was electrifying.

The men reacted, as, "Wow! Big story! Big story! Let's get out there!"

But the difference was that the women all looked pallid and shocked.

You know, living and working as a woman in the north of England at that time,

it's really hard to convey how frightening it was.

Will you not be going out late at night?

I don't go out now. I'm frightened.

Because of things like the Yorkshire Ripper? Frightened to death.

It's terrible, honestly.

We're going to a disco.

Are you normally walking through here? No. No!

A lot of girls who are walking in the streets of Leeds in the night-time

are carrying small pocket alarms, rather like this one.

HIGH-PITCHED TONE

Leeds Police warn women who've been going out armed with knives

and sharpened steel combs

that they do risk arrest for carrying offensive weapons.

At this point, Superintendent Frank Morritt took on a new role

as media relations officer for the investigation.

What was it like?

Yes, there was more pressure. I think it was merely a continuation

of the pressure that'd already been growing.

The prostitutes were very, very vulnerable.

But when you started picking ordinary ladies off the street,

that was a different kettle of fish altogether.

'Transit minibus is available to take any girl home to her door.

'For your own safety, do not walk home alone.

'I must stress, for your own safety, do not walk home alone.'

There's hundreds of girls at Bradford and Leeds universities,

so suddenly, two university populations

were extremely vulnerable now.

And extremely concerned, as were their parents.

Someone somewhere must know who we're looking for.

The next victim could be your wife,

your daughter, your sister, or your niece.

As terror mounted, and no nearer to catching the killer,

the police suggested a curfew for lone women.

There's a lot of women very worried now after all these murders.

What can you say that would alleviate their worries?

I could only say to them that they must not walk out at night alone.

They can't be shut in or imprisoned,

but it is not safe for them to walk about the streets in the early hours

of the morning, as was illustrated here.

And as was illustrated at Halifax a short time ago.

Men are confidently walking the streets of Leeds alone,

but women can't. You know, we are subject to a curfew.

Can you appreciate the point that the police in West Yorkshire

are trying to make, that women are at risk

and perhaps it's sensible to stay off the streets at night?

Why should women be asked to stay at home...?

Because a homicidal maniac's roaming the streets, ready to kill them!

One homicidal maniac.

All women throughout the country are being terrorised.

We have to have a curfew on men, and not on women.

There was a huge tension.

I mean, the publicity coming from the police

and those in authority was curfew on women.

"You stay in at home," which was not acceptable.

So we didn't abide by that.

Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard.

But I think... ? Oh, bondage, up yours! ?

Men off the streets! Men off the streets!

Men off the streets!

The women organised the march through the city centre,

calling for a police curfew on men instead,

and appealing for women to be allowed to carry weapons

for self-protection.

On 22nd of November 1980,

500 women protested the suggested curfew

by marching through the Leeds streets with flaming torches.

Reclaim the Night marches had begun in Yorkshire in 1977.

But the numbers joining them had rocketed.

It's striking that the Ripper killings proved to be a catalyst

for a growing feminist movement.

They were carrying placards,

"Men off the street", "The streets are for women", blah blah blah.

In today's phraseology, you'd say the feminists got hold of it.

We're protesting not just about the Ripper,

but all forms of sexual violence against women by men.

But clearly the Ripper murders are just about as extreme

a demonstration of male violence against women

as you could ever possibly see.

So is this the way the march went?

This is where the march went, we came up this way.

Al Garthwaite was part of a group called Leeds Revolutionary Feminists

and a key organiser of the march.

Why did you feel that direct action was necessary?

Why had it come to that?

I know that after Jacqueline Hill was killed, for example,

some female students actually left Leeds.

They left their courses, they were so scared. That's really sad.

There didn't seem to be any other way of making our voices heard.

The way it was framed was there was a contest between one group of men,

the police, on one hand,

and the Ripper on the other hand,

whereas women were some sort of pawns in the middle of it all.

Frank Morritt was involved in the policing of the marches.

They weren't being told to stay in.

They were told, when you go out, be careful,

when you go out, be accompanied.

Don't go out on your own.

Part of that message was, of course, addressed to the prostitutes,

who were still coming out onto the street,

still making themselves available as targets, as victims,

but for the other ladies, it got translated in some newspapers

as "don't go out".

That's how women felt they were being...

That's what they felt they were being told.

Yeah, well, what they were being told, actually,

and I was part of that message, was "don't go out on your own".

Two units, one unit will be the...

..escort squad.

They didn't understand at all

what we were doing, or why we were doing it.

I think they thought we were just mad,

a group of women who were completely on the margins,

who were out of control.

They actually used those words.

These women are "out of control".

Whose control we were supposed to be in?

Men off the streets! Men off the streets!

The investigation was now officially

the biggest manhunt in British history

and it cost in excess of �5 million.

In West Yorkshire's incident rooms,

there was now a nine month backlog of work,

and over 36,000 unprocessed documents in police files.

Did you go to a lot of press conferences

throughout the investigation?

There seemed to be one every other day.

We probably demanded them

as much as the police felt they ought to hold them.

But those press conferences became, in a way, a bit more depressing

as the years went on, as we sat there and asked questions,

and the police appeared to have fewer and fewer answers,

but more and more bodies.

Are you concerned in any way about the way this inquiry

is being conducted? No.

Or about the public reaction,

which seems to be perhaps getting a little more sceptical

and a little less sympathetic?

No.

I used to come out of press conferences thinking,

they haven't got a hope in hell. They're not going to catch him.

The lack of progress hadn't escaped the notice of Prime Minister

Margaret Thatcher either.

Eight days after the murder of Jacqueline Hill,

a letter was sent to West Yorkshire Police

from the offices of 10 Downing Street.

Only recently made public, it reports that she said...

"The local police had so far failed totally in their inquiries

"into a series of murders which constituted the most appalling

"kind of violence against women."

The floundering case had now become a matter of national interest,

and Thatcher asked Home Secretary William Whitelaw to intervene.

The morale of the police themselves,

already dented by five years of failure in the hunt for the Ripper,

took another blow two days ago with the news

that top policemen from outside had been called in to help.

And a new supremo had been appointed.

I don't think I've been forced into it.

Obviously I have to take notice of public opinion

and the feeling of elected representatives, and so on.

The new supremo wasn't new all.

It was Jim Hopson,

who had been involved in the case from the beginning.

Do you think a new team and new advisers

could give you that break?

Well, it often does the trick, doesn't it? It does it in football,

it does it in all walks of life.

It's like a jigsaw. If somebody is making a jigsaw and they can't find

the piece, perhaps they'll bring someone else in who could find it.

He's already been on it before, and he couldn't do anything about it.

So to come back on it again, it's not going to help any more, is it?

After five years, 13 murders, and at least eight attacks,

many now saw the killer as an almost mythical figure

who might never be caught.

But that was all about to change,

and it would have nothing to do with West Yorkshire Police.

'A man has been arrested

'in connection with the Yorkshire Ripper murders...'

The moment that the killer was picked up

was a rather curious moment

because it happened almost by default

in the back streets of Sheffield.

Late on Friday evening,

a uniformed sergeant and a uniformed constable were on patrol duties

in the centre of Sheffield.

During the course of those duties,

they had occasion to speak to a man who was with a lady in a vehicle.

Two Sheffield officers on routine patrol

had spotted a car in the local red light area.

They checked, and it had false number plates.

The vehicle was bearing false number plates.

We then made other inquiries

and ended up in arresting the two occupants.

The officers who picked the man up were from South Yorkshire Police.

They weren't even part of the Ripper investigation.

But because the man was arrested in a red light area,

he was transferred to the Ripper squad in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.

Finally, West Yorkshire police started to interview him

and the penny dropped quite quickly

that they might well have their man.

This may finally be the Yorkshire Ripper.

The West Yorkshire officers were contacted.

Some of our men went down there and had a word with this man.

The man is now in West Yorkshire, helping us with our inquiries.

Later that day, the Sheffield sergeant returned to the scene,

as he remembered allowing the man to go behind a building to urinate,

just after the arrest.

Without telling anyone, he got in his car

and drove the three miles back to Melbourne Avenue.

Around the back of the building and near a domestic oil tank,

he discovered an engineer's ball-peen hammer,

and a four-inch bladed vegetable knife.

What happened next

would send shock waves around the whole country.

Confronted with the weapons he had hidden,

the suspect admitted to being the Yorkshire Ripper.

After a five-year investigation, the Ripper had finally been caught

by another force on routine patrol.

And in your view, it was good police work that enabled you

to assist the Ripper Squad in this particular way?

Just straightforward coppering.

The men leading the inquiry can take little credit.

Yet, before the suspect had even confessed to all the murders,

they called a press conference to announce the arrest.

It was so hastily arranged,

Frank Morritt, their media relations officer, told me

they didn't even inform him.

I got a telephone call from one of the newspaper reporters,

who said, "Frank, I'm looking for you. Where are you?"

"I'm at home. Why?"

"Why aren't you at the press conference?"

"What press conference?"

When I got there, the press conference was in session,

and George had come off sick leave to be there.

So yes, the atmosphere was electric, to say the least.

I can tell you he's being questioned

in relation to the Yorkshire Ripper murders.

Can you tell us whether he has a Geordie accent?

I cannot tell you that because I've not heard him speak.

I got a telephone call.

There's this Detective Chief Superintendent.

He said, "They've got the Ripper."

He said, "Is there something you want to ask?"

I said, "Yes. Where does he come from?"

He said, "Well not bloody Sunderland, I can tell you!"

He said he was Yorkshire.

And, you know, I could have cried.

I could have cried at that moment.

Is it fair then to say

that the general hunt for the so-called Yorkshire Ripper

is now being wound down? Right.

Yes, absolutely delighted.

The arrest of a Yorkshire man made it clear once and for all

that the tape and letters were a hoax.

For almost two years, the police had put all their efforts and resources

into chasing a false lead.

And there were worse revelations to come.

Within West Yorkshire Police's incident room,

and its bursting trays of paper, lay the killer's identity.

He'd been interviewed for the �5 note inquiry,

did indeed work at Clarke's Haulage,

and had received the note in his pay packet.

During the course of the investigation

he had been questioned by police nine times,

the first time on 2nd November 1977.

If he had been arrested then,

seven women might still be alive.

Absolutely delighted!

'The volume of abuse from the crowd rose to a deafening pitch...'

When it came out that he had been arrested,

I just thought, "About bloody time!"

The atmosphere was electric.

It was super charged.

I think she realised after the court case

how lucky she was to be alive.