All language subtitles for Britains.Most.Evil.Killers.S01E02.WEBRip.en

-On January the 2nd, 1981,

two policemen approached
a parked car on Melbourne Avenue

in Sheffield, South Yorkshire,

to talk with the couple
sitting in the front.

The officers had no idea
they were about to arrest

a man who'd murdered 13 women

and evaded the authorities
for over five years.

-The relief that the man behind
these horrible offenses

had finally been caught
and was behind bars was immense.

-Peter Sutcliffe,
the man the press were calling

the Yorkshire Ripper,
had a cold-blooded M.O.

He was attacking helpless women
with a hammer

before stabbing them to death
with a screwdriver.

-The streets became
quieter and quieter

because on the horizon
was this monster

called
the Yorkshire Ripper.

-The whole of Britain
was terrified

by the elusive murderer

who seemed to kill
for his own enjoyment.

-Peter, in my opinion,
was a ruthless,

coldhearted killer

who actually enjoyed
going out and killing.

He got a thrill.
He got a buzz.

-Peter Sutcliffe,
the Yorkshire Ripper,

had undoubtedly become one of
the world's most evil killers.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Peter Sutcliffe is one of
the most infamous killers

in British history.

For five years,
he evaded capture

while brutally murdering
13 young women

across the north of England.

It was an investigation
with twists and turns

and a case that still haunts
the British public to this day.

-For years, women and girls

felt that simply
leaving their homes at night

meant taking their lives
in their hands.

-When Sutcliffe
was eventually apprehended

on January the 2nd, 1981,
it brought an end to a manhunt

that had both terrified
and captivated the nation.

The press had dubbed him
the Yorkshire Ripper.

For women,
it was a very frightening time,

and they were stuck
in this awful position

of being told
they shouldn't go out at night.

It had an enormous social effect
on the country.

-As well as his 13 victims,

Sutcliffe had attacked
at least seven more women.

His arrest was a huge relief

for the under-pressure
detectives

at West Yorkshire Police.

-And he attacked random.

We couldn't anticipate
his moves.

The whole of
the north of England

was held in a --
well, a grip of terror, really,

by this man.

It was a sort of --
I can only describe it

as a Gothic-type cloud
over the area.

-But the Yorkshire Ripper's
story begins over 70 years ago.

Peter Sutcliffe was born
on the 2nd of June, 1946,

in the market town of Bingley

on the outskirts
of Bradford, West Yorkshire.

-He was the youngest
of quite a large family.

His brothers and sisters
were all of strong character.

They were all working-class,
could look after themselves,

but Peter was a shy boy

and very much attached
to his mother.

-His mother was somebody who was
very much dominated

and controlled by his father,

so I think he had quite
a lot of sympathy for his mum,

and he thought the world of her
as a child,

but Peter was somebody who was
quite shy, quite awkward.

He was quite skinny and scrawny,

and I don't think
he ever lived up

to his father's expectations,

and I think that planted that
seed of shame in Peter Sutcliffe

that would come to shape
the rest of his life.

-Sutcliffe's awkward demeanor
as a child

manifested
into a dysfunctional adulthood,

demonstrated in
his early career choices.

-Peter Sutcliffe had a variety
of different jobs

throughout his life.

He worked as a gravedigger
for quite a period of time,

and it was reported that
he stole things from the corpses

that he was burying.

Now, that suggests, to me,

that he wasn't horrified
or repulsed by dead bodies,

and that's something that would
be quite influential later on.

-On Valentine's Day, 1967,

21-year-old Sutcliffe
met Sonia Szurma.

The pair began
a long-term relationship,

eventually getting married
in August 1974.

-The relationship that he had
with his wife, Sonia,

appeared to have been
a decent one,

and I think he would have
treated her fairly well

because she served
a purpose for him.

Women like his mother
and his wife,

he saw as carers
and nurturers --

people who would look after him.

Other women, I think,
he saw somewhat differently.

I think Peter Sutcliffe's view
of women

is very black-and-white.

They are either Madonnas,
or they are whores,

so they're either
these perfect domestic angels,

or they're
these sinful creatures.

-These opposing views on women
collided with one another

when a family revelation
dramatically altered

23-year-old Sutcliffe's world.

His mother, whom he'd
looked up to as a child,

had been unfaithful.

-His mother had had an affair
with a policeman,

and his father had decided
to confront his wife

at a hotel where she was meeting
this particular man

and took Peter with him.

-Peter's father basically
humiliated her and said,

"Look. You know, I know
all about what's going on,

and the children found out,
as well."

So I think this kind of
further cemented ideas

as to what women were,
what could be expected of them,

always to be cautious
and wary of them.

-I think there is
every possibility

that after seeing his mother
and seeing what happened,

that that possibly
preyed on his mind

and affected his attitude
towards women.

-Sutcliffe began to visit

the red-light districts
of Yorkshire

and find solace in prostitutes,
but his feelings for these women

would soon lead to violence
and eventually murder.

-It's never been established

precisely when Peter
started his attacks.

The first recorded one,
or the first known one,

was sometime in 1969

when he was with a friend
called Trevor Birdsong,

and Peter told Trevor
that he was looking for

a particular prostitute
who owed him money,

and they cruised Leeds,

and Peter told Trevor
to suddenly stop the car.

-He jumped out of the car,
suddenly disappeared,

followed her down the street,

and whacked her
on the back of the head,

and then ran sweating
back to the car and away.

The following day,
the police came around

and confronted Sutcliffe.

He acknowledged
that he'd struck the woman.

He said he'd just given her
a light blow with a hand,

and because the woman
was working as a prostitute,

she didn't want any more
problems with the police,

and so she didn't go ahead
with a complaint.

Had he been arrested then,
had he been listed

as somebody attacking a woman
in this aggressive way,

who knows whether or not

it would have been much easier
to find him.

-Whether their were
other attacks

between 1969 and 1975,
nobody really knows,

but his first real attack
came in 1975.

-By October of that year,

Sutcliffe was living with
his wife, Sonia, in Bradford

and working as
a long-distance lorry driver.

On the morning of
October the 30th, 1975,

just 12 miles away
in the Chapeltown area of Leeds,

the body of 28-year-old
Wilma McCann

was discovered
in a local park.

-Wilma McCann
was a Scottish woman

who had come down to Yorkshire.

She was working as a prostitute.

She was very hard up, and it
was very difficult for her

because she had young children,
young family, to support,

and I think that was
the only way she felt

she could get enough money.

-The attack on Wilma McCann
set in motion

what would become
a clear pattern

and regular method of ambush
by the killer.

-His modus operandi
was to use a ball-peen hammer

and was to strike them
very hard and very fast

on the back of the head
so they fell unconscious.

He used his hammer and hit her
over the back of the head,

and then he stabbed her 15 times
in the neck, chest, and abdomen.

-But the police were no closer
to catching the killer,

and three months later,
on the 20th of January, 1976,

another woman
was murdered in Leeds --

42-year-old wife
and mother Emily Jackson

who'd vanished after a night out
at her local pub.

Emily's son, Neil,
was 17 years old at the time.

He remembers receiving
the tragic news

on that fateful morning.

-I've come downstairs.

My dad's loading
one of the vans up for work,

and I'm getting my boots on
ready for going to work,

and having a pot of tea

when there was
a knock at the door,

and it was the police,

and that's when I first knew --

first knew when life
was over for Dad

when the police
knocked at the door.

I can still remember it
plain as day.

-Again, a hammer had been used
in the brutal attack.

Emily had also been stabbed
a total of 52 times

with a screwdriver.

Like Wilma McCann,
Emily Jackson had been

working as a prostitute
to make ends meet.

-It was just to help a family
in dire straits

is what I've been told
afterwards.

When family were at work, why,
she went elsewhere,

but I didn't realize
'til well after.

-This time, police were able
to recover from the scene

a key piece of evidence.

On Emily's right thigh was a
very firm and visible footprint

from a size-7 Wellington boot.

-For some inexplicable reason,

he stamped on her thigh
with such force

that it left an imprint of the
sole of his boot on her thigh.

Our police tried
to trace that boot,

or the manufacturers
of the boot, which they did,

and then try and find out people
who had bought them,

but it didn't come to anything.

-Once again,
the trail went cold.

It was over a year
until a murder

with a familiar M.O.
took place in Leeds.

On the morning of
February the 4th, 1977,

the body of 28-year-old
Irene Richardson was discovered.

She'd been savagely murdered --

another prostitute
killed with a hammer.

West Yorkshire police
were suddenly dealing

with a serial killer.

What they didn't realize is that
this was just the beginning

of what would become

one of the most infamous
series of murders

in British history.

Less than three months after
the death of a third victim,

Irene Richardson,
the killer struck again.

On the night of
the 23rd of April, 1977,

32-year-old prostitute
Patricia Atkinson

became victim number 4.

She was murdered
in her own flat,

this time not in Leeds,
but in nearby Bradford.

-She believed that if she
invited customers into her flat,

she was safe because all
the killings had taken place

in isolated parks
or back alleys.

So she thought she was safe,
but she wasn't.

-The killer hit Patricia
four times around the head

with a hammer and then mutilated
her body with a knife.

This time, detectives found
a clue to link the murders

of Patricia Atkinson
and Emily Jackson.

-The police found the same
boot mark on the bedclothes

at Patricia's house --
Patricia's flat --

as they had found
on Emily Jackson's thigh.

-This crucial link confirmed
the authorities' worst fears --

the killer was expanding
his hunting ground,

and he seemed to have
a favored target.

All four murder victims
had been working as prostitutes.

-They were
very vulnerable women.

It was very easy to
persuade them to get into a car.

It was very easy to find them,

and they were used to
not being protected in any way,

and so he would be able
to drive along,

ask them if
they were up for business,

and they would get into the car.

And he realized then that

as long as there was nobody
watching what was going on,

he could do what he liked.

-But the next victim
would buck the trend

and shock the nation.

On the morning of
the 26th of June, 1977,

just over two months after
the murder of Patricia Atkinson,

two children
in an adventure playground

made a gruesome discovery --

the body of 16-year-old girl
Jayne McDonald.

-She wasn't a prostitute.

She was a young girl going home,
minding her own business.

But suddenly
a schoolgirl was attacked,

and that changed
everybody's perception

of the sort of man
they were looking for.

-By this stage, if it was
a woman who was vulnerable,

he was happy to kill them.

-Any woman was vulnerable

if they were found
on the streets late at night.

-This latest kill caused
a great public outcry.

Now courtesy
of the tabloid press,

the killer had a nickname --
the Yorkshire Ripper.

-After Jayne McDonald's murder,

the press then,
and television, actually,

became more interested
in what was happening.

-You have to remember that
nothing had happened like this

since the Jack the Ripper
in London in the century before.

-What did become clear
was the attitude of that time

because she was described
in some newspapers

as his first innocent victim --

as though, in some ways,
the prostitutes had been guilty

of making themselves
vulnerable to him.

It caused a lot of anger
amongst women,

amongst feminists,

and amongst
any commentator with a heart.

She was a victim
who prompted the police

to work much harder than,
I think,

they had been working
at the time.

-What this did
in the public mind

was actually create mass fear.

There was a great deal of fear,

and as the killings went on
and the attacks went on,

that fear increased
on a monumental basis.

Women were frightened
of going out at night.

Women questioned
where their husbands were,

boyfriends were,
what they were doing

when a particular attack
had taken place,

and they, perhaps, weren't where
they said they had been.

-The increased media attention
in the case intensified

the ongoing suffering
of the victims' loved ones.

-It was forced everywhere.

It don't matter where you went.

Papers, TV, buses, back ads --

It was advertised everywhere.

There were no way
you could get away from it.

It made it harder for me,
just seeing photo of Mum

and being not there
to talk to her.

-With a full-scale manhunt
now taking place,

West Yorkshire police were
desperate to capture the Ripper

before he struck again,

but he was seemingly
always one step ahead.

His next murder would take place
across the Pennines.

On the morning of
the 9th of October, 1977,

the heavily mutilated body

of 20-year-old prostitute
Jean Jordan

was discovered
on an allotment in Manchester.

She had been dead
for over a week.

This time, detectives found
an important clue --

a newly minted £5 note
in Jean's handbag

which led them to
a 31-year-old lorry driver

from Bradford, Peter Sutcliffe.

-The police found the £5 note.

They traced it via the banks

and found that it had
gone through the hands of,

probably, 300 people,

one of them being Peter.

Peter was interviewed,

but on the night in question,
he said he was at a party,

and his members of his family

confirmed that
he had been at the party.

-The police didn't know it,
but they had found the murderer.

It would not be the last time

Peter Sutcliffe slipped through
the fingers of the authorities.

Between December 1977
and May 1978,

he would kill three more women,
all of them prostitutes,

all of them bludgeoned to death
with a hammer.

-I think that the longer that
serial killers get away with it,

the more bold and the more,
kind of, dramatic

their offending becomes

and the more prolific
they become

because they've been flying
under the radar for so long.

They may have even been
interviewed by the police

and subsequently
not charged with anything.

Then you get to the point

where they feel
completely untouchable.

-On December the 14th, 1977,

one woman survived an attack
by the Ripper --

25-year-old prostitute
Marilyn Moore.

She described her assailant
in detail to the police,

and a photo-fit picture
was released.

By May 1978,
West Yorkshire police

had interviewed Sutcliffe
on seven different occasions

but continually ruled him out
of the investigation.

Lead detective George Oldfield's
attention

had been diverted elsewhere.

-I'm Jack.

I see you are still having
no luck catching me.

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

You are no nearer
catching me now

than four years ago
when I started.

-What really derailed
the investigation --

well, largely derailed
the investigation --

was a tape from a chap
in the northeast from Wearside

who sent George Oldfield a tape,

which became known as
"Wearside Jack's tape,"

in which he said,
"You haven't caught me.

You've been looking
for four years,"

and really taunting the police.

-He mocked George Oldfield
and said,

"Your men are not doing
very well.

I've done another one,

and you still
haven't caught me."

And, you know, the Geordie
accent or Wearside accent --

and as a result of that,

the police discounted people
like Peter Sutcliffe.

-It had been almost a year
since Sutcliffe had struck,

but early on the morning
of the 5th of April, 1979,

a woman discovered the mutilated
and bloodied body

of his 10th victim,

19-year-old
building society worker

Josephine Whitaker in Halifax.

The Yorkshire Ripper's
322-day hiatus

had come to a devastating end.

In August 1979,

West Yorkshire police
would pay another visit

to Sutcliffe's house
in Garden Lane, Bradford.

Officer Andrew Laptew
will never forget the day

he stood face-to-face
with the Yorkshire Ripper.

-The reason for going
to see Sutcliffe

was because his vehicle
had been sighted

in three red-light areas --

in Leeds, in Bradford,
and in Manchester.

Talking to Sutcliffe
was like pulling teeth.

You'd say to him,
"What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a driver."

"Where do you work?"

"Oh, Clarke's at Shipley."

He wouldn't volunteer
any information

without it being asked from him,

and one of our ploys --

tactic, if you like,
an icebreaker --

was to say to the wife,

"Now's your chance to get rid of
your husband if you want."

Now, said jokingly,
but it was an icebreaker

to put everybody
at their ease.

With the Sutcliffes,

there was no reaction
whatsoever,

which I found strange

'cause at least
you'd get a smirk or a laugh.

He was quite an attractive man,
you know, well-groomed,

but had no personality,

no charisma about him
whatsoever, no aura.

There was nothing there.

-Laptew felt so uneasy about
his encounter with Sutcliffe,

he submitted a report
to his senior officers

suggesting Sutcliffe needed
to be investigated further.

Laptew was within
striking distance

of the force's most wanted.

-I had the report typed up,
and I says,

"I've interviewed
this fellow.

I don't like him."

I says, "I've got a really
bad feeling about this.

It's an itch
that I can't scratch."

Anything to do with the case
was attached to the report,

and I went directly
to Dick Holland

in the incident room.

-He put in a report
to his senior officers

that Peter was a person
who should be of interest,

someone who should be
looked at closely,

and one of the key things
that Mr. Laptew noticed

was that Peter had a gap
in his two front teeth,

and this, he felt,
could mark up, or marry up,

with bite marks
found on two of the victims.

-He asked me
if it was a Geordie.

I says, "No, he's from Bradford.
He's from around these parts."

I says, "but it's a dead ringer

for the Marilyn Moore
photo-fit,"

and then he hit the roof.

"If anybody mentions
effing photo-fits to me,

they'll be doing traffic
for the rest of their service."

It wasn't so bad that
I had the report rejected.

It was the manner
of the rejection

in front of about 50 people,

so I could have crawled
into the crack in the door

after that tirade,

but you've got to remember,
these fellows were like gods.

That's how much in high esteem
we held them.

-The senior detectives on the
Ripper case were so convinced

that the killer was
the mysterious Wearside Jack

that they dismissed
any other suspects.

It was a mistake that would soon
lead to the deaths

of three more women
across West Yorkshire.

-Police threw all their eggs
into one basket

and discounted a lot of others

and spent many, many man hours,
days, weeks

trying to track down
Wearside Jack,

and that threw the whole
investigation into kilter.

It really did derail it.

-He'd had many escapes --
Peter Sutcliffe --

during the investigation.

He was interviewed
a total of nine occasions.

He lied his way out
on every occasion,

and he was a very good liar.

He always had quite
a clever excuse

as to why he had been somewhere.

He had the perfect alibi

because he was
a long-distance lorry driver,

so he had a perfect excuse
to be in different places

at odd times
of the day or night.

-I think Peter Sutcliffe
was rather amused

by what was going on
in terms of the manhunt for him.

He'd been questioned
by the police several times.

He was right under their nose
on multiple occasions,

and even Peter Sutcliffe himself
has said,

"I got to the point where
I thought I must be invisible."

So he got to a stage
where he felt untouchable.

He felt so powerful.

He thought that he was never
going to get caught.

-As the police were trying
to trace Wearside Jack,

Peter then
started killing again,

and in September 1979,

he attacked a young
Bradford University student

called Barbara Leach.

-20-year-old Barbara
was found murdered

on September the 2nd, 1979,
in Back Ashgrove, Bradford,

only 200 yards from where
she said goodbye to her friends

after a night out.

The women of West Yorkshire

and the surrounding area
were living in fear.

Prostitutes
were particularly in danger.

8 of the 11 victims
had been working on the streets.

-They were all
very, very frightened.

They needed to keep working,
but there was always this fear

that the next man,
the next client,

could be the Yorkshire Ripper.

-He created fear and terror

on the streets of West Yorkshire
and Lancashire.

He was somebody
who was striking at night.

Nobody knew
where he'd strike next.

He was absolutely terrifying
for people.

-The mood
across the U.K. as a whole

was stifled and tense,

awaiting the next move
from the man the public knew

only as the Ripper.

-We'd never had
anything like it.

The media coverage
was overwhelming about it,

so wherever you were,

there was always something
about the case --

that a million pounds
worth of publicity,

with the hoaxer's handwriting
on billboards,

rewards were offered.

It was a massive, massively
intensive campaign, really,

both from a police point of view
and a media point of view,

and it saturated
your whole life.

-The problem for the police

was the days of
before computers,

and police, in those days,

would log information
on index cards.

Because of the notoriety of
the attacks and the publicity,

the police were inundated
with information.

The had boxes and boxes
and boxes full of index cards,

which filled an enormous room

in West Yorkshire
Police Headquarters.

-There's been undue criticism
of the police

who made every move
with the best intention

with the information
that they had.

You cannot sort of anticipate

what a murderer
is gonna do at random.

All the stops were pulled out
because all the police wanted

from the top to the bottom
was for this man to be captured

so we could get back
to normal, everyday policing.

-For almost a year,
there were no more attacks

until the body of 47-year-old
civil servant Marguerite Walls

was discovered in Leeds
on the 20th of August, 1980.

She'd been hit
on the back of the head,

and in a change to
the usual method of the Ripper,

she had also been strangled.

-Ligature strangulation marks
are often very characteristic.

The ligature
will compress the neck.

It will often graze it
just a little bit,

and when the person dies,

that area of the ligature mark

will go quite yellow,
quite hard,

and it's usually
very characteristic --

something that will be
identified very quickly.

-Now, why he changed
his modus operandi,

nobody seems to know.

-Marguerite Walls was
Sutcliffe's 12th victim,

but police were still
no nearer to catching him.

A month later,
in September 1980,

20-year-old student Mo Lea

moved from Liverpool to Leeds
to complete her degree.

She immediately felt the change
in atmosphere,

having arrived in
the Ripper's home county.

-So in 1980, I'd just completed
a foundation degree

in art and design
from Liverpool,

so I ended up going to Leeds
to do a fine-art degree,

but there was
a strange atmosphere there.

The streets became
quieter and quieter

because on the horizon
was this monster

called the Yorkshire Ripper.

There'd be another murder,
and it'd be closer to home,

and we began to realize that,
as women going out alone,

we were pretty vulnerable.

-Despite the continued rise
in fear across the county,

Mo and her friends felt
an increased sense of unity

against the unknown assailant.

-There was a curfew almost
on women going out alone.

There was that solidarity
amongst the women

and female friends,
and the blokes, as well,

that they'd make sure
that they would walk you home.

-Mo and her fellow students
were an independent group

who tried as hard as they could
to be unaffected

by the events around them.

But this would all change
on October the 25th, 1980.

-I had planned to go into
the town center of Leeds

to meet a group of friends
from art school,

and I left that pub.

I think it was about
quarter to 10:00, 10:00.

My friends were saying,
"Oh, we'll walk you into town,"

and, "Are you gonna be
all right?"

And I --
"For goodness sake," you know,

"I'm absolutely fine.
It's not far."

I got to the outskirts
of the campus,

and there's a church,

and you can either
take the long way around

or you can go
through a shortcut street.

I made a decision that
it would be much easier for me

to go through that shortcut
and get into town

so I could get home safely.

-But Mo was not alone.

-It was fairly dark,
and as I was halfway through,

I heard this voice
calling to me.

So I stopped,
and I turn 'round,

and I walk towards this figure,

and it was a young man.

I thought,
"Maybe I do know him."

He was so friendly, so friendly.

-But Mo was wrong.

He was not a friend
or even a kindly stranger.

-So I realized
I didn't know this chap,

and then I realized
I was in danger.

I just sensed this,

and as soon as I started
to run really quickly,

his footsteps were behind me

getting quicker and quicker
and quicker,

and the fear --
my knees turned to jelly.

And all I remember
was getting this massive whack

on the top of my head,

and I saw the ground
come up towards me,

and that was all
that I remember.

But it was real fear --

like, nightmare,
deep, deep fear.

I've never been frightened
before like that ever or since.

-Fortunately,
Mo's attacker was disturbed

when a group of students
approached

after hearing her screams.

The next thing Mo knew,
she was waking up in hospital.

-I was pretty lucky.

I think my bones
are pretty strong,

so the blow
to the top of the head

has left quite a large dent
and crack in my skull.

I had two puncture wounds
to the back of my --

top of my neck,
just below my skull,

and cuts and bruises
on my knees and elbows

where I'd fallen
to the floor.

-The police could not be sure
the attack on Mo Lea

was carried out by the Ripper,

but they wouldn't
have to wait long

before he claimed
his 13th victim.

On the 17th of November, 1980,
in Leeds,

Jacqueline Hill,
a 20-year-old student,

was hit over the head,

stabbed repeatedly,
and mutilated --

an attack that bore
all the hallmarks of the Ripper.

But Jacqueline Hill would be
Peter Sutcliffe's final victim.

Within two months,
a routine police stop would lead

to one of the most sensational
arrests of modern times --

the capture
of the Yorkshire Ripper.

-Just after New Year
on January 2nd, 1981,

Peter went to Sheffield
and picked up a prostitute.

On the same evening, a policeman
with a lot of years of service

decided to show a young rookie
around Sheffield.

-The two police officers
spotted Sutcliffe's car

near offices
on Melbourne Avenue

in Sheffield's
red-light district.

They decided to approach
and talk to the pair.

-The cops asked,
"What's your girlfriend's name?"

He said, "I don't know.
We've only just met."

And the policeman said,
you know,

"I haven't just fallen off
a Christmas tree,"

so he already realized there
was something odd going on.

-Peter said that
he needed to urinate,

and the officers let him
go up to a wall

by the side of the building.

While he was away,
the young police officer

did a PNC check on
the registration of the car

and found that
the plates were false,

so Peter was arrested and taken
to Dewsbury Police Station.

-Once down at the station,
Sutcliffe was searched.

He wasn't carrying any weapons,
but this time detectives

weren't going to let him
slip from their grasp.

-So one of them thought,
"Let's go back to that place

where we spotted him,

and let's see
if he did leave anything

when he popped out of the car

saying he was going
to have a pee."

-The police returned to the
scene of the original arrest.

-They found the hammer --
the intended murder weapon --

and they came back with them.

And gradually after that,

Peter Sutcliffe realized
that the game was up,

and eventually he confessed,

and his only condition was

that he be allowed
to tell his wife, Sonia,

before it became known
to the general public

that he was indeed
the Yorkshire Ripper.

-It had been over five years

since the murder
of Wilma McCann,

but detectives finally
had the Ripper in custody.

All the years of terror
for women in West Yorkshire,

all the years of frustration
for the police,

had come to an abrupt end.

Andrew Laptew had suspected
Sutcliffe may be the Ripper

for the previous two years.

He vividly remembers the moment

a fellow officer
told him the incredible news.

-She came in and says, "They've
caught the Yorkshire Ripper."

I says, "What? Really?
Who was it?"

And she said, "Somebody called
Peter Sutcliffe."

Well, it was like
somebody punching me

in the chest
from the inside.

The bottom had fallen out
of my world.

-Sutcliffe's arrest made
headlines across the country.

-He is being questioned

in relation to
the Yorkshire Ripper murders.

We are absolutely delighted
with developments at this stage.

-When Peter was caught,
the press was all over it.

At the time, it was probably
one of the biggest stories

since the Moors murders.

The capture of Peter
was front-page headlines

and on top of the news for days,

not only in Britain,
but around the world.

-His arrest was greeted
with enormous relief.

For six years,
this man had terrorized

a large portion of the country.

The relief that the man
behind these horrible offenses

had finally been caught
and was behind bars was immense,

and that shadow
that he cast over the country

for those number of years
passed.

-I think when
he was finally apprehended,

he would have felt a sense of
resignation that this was over,

that he wouldn't be able
to commit any more murders,

but I think he probably would've
been a bit shocked, as well,

'cause he'd been getting away
with it for so long,

that he thought
he'd just be able

to talk his way out of it again.

-A wave of relief
spread across the country,

but the announcement
came as a shock

to the family members
of those killed.

-I'd seen on the telly
when he got caught,

and at first,
I couldn't believe it.

When I started listening to it
properly and realizing,

then I got confirmation
all over the place.

A bit of a relief
to see that he had been caught.

People felt a bit safer.

-Another viewer intently
watching the story unfold

was Mo Lea.

-I was at home in Liverpool,

and his face appeared
on the TV news.

It was when he was actually
taken from a prison van

into a courts,

and there was really
a good camera shot,

and I recognized his face
and his eyes.

I actually fell to my knees.

I was alone at home.
It was the 6:00 news.

I thought,
"That's the man I chatted to."

Then I was reallyhorrified

because it dawned on me
that he had attacked me,

so that was my first
real understanding that,

for sure,
it was Peter Sutcliffe.

-On the 5th of January, 1981,
at Dewsbury Magistrate's Court,

Sutcliffe was remanded
in custody

for the murder
of Jacqueline Hill.

Later, on the 20th of February,

he was charged
with all 13 murders

and a further 7
attempted murders.

-Once he'd been charged,
I think Peter Sutcliffe felt

that he had a chance
of not going to prison

but of claiming to be mad

and, therefore,
going to a secure hospital

where life would be
much easier for him,

and so he emphasized the fact
that he believed

God had instructed him
to clear the streets

and that it had been
the devil --

a devilish urge had made him
carry these things out.

-The preliminary hearing began
on the 29th of April, 1981,

at the Old Bailey in London.

Sutcliffe pleaded not guilty
to murder,

but guilty to manslaughter

on the grounds
of diminished responsibility.

-The trial judge
at that particular hearing

heard evidence
from four psychiatrists --

two for the prosecution
and two for the defense.

-The judge stepped in and said,
"We need to be careful here

because whilst I don't disagree
with these psychiatrists,

they're only going on what
Peter Sutcliffe has told them,

so we need to be very careful

about accepting the word
of a multiple murderer."

-Mr. Justice Boreham decided
at the end of it

that Peter should stand trial
in front of a jury

on the charges of murder
and attempted murder,

and that's what happened.

-The trial began
on May the 5th, 1981.

-The crowds had waited
for hours,

some through the night,

to watch Peter Sutcliffe
arrive from Brixton

in a green prison van.

-The 14-day trial
was essentially a discussion

about whether
Peter Sutcliffe was,

as judge Mr. Justice Boreham
put it, "bad or mad."

On May the 22nd, the jury
had reached their decision.

-As each of the 13 women's names
was read out,

the answer was the same --

by majority of 10 to 2,
guilty of murder on all charges.

-This seals the end
of the largest murder inquiry

in the history
of the British police,

and we brought it
to a satisfactory conclusion.

-I think when you look at

Peter Sutcliffe's
offending behavior,

he's somebody who's very much
in control of what he's doing.

Yes, his crimes are
quite bloody, quite gory.

They're incredibly violent.

But he escapes.
He gets away with it.

He picks up again
where he left off.

He goes prepared
to the crime scene.

So he's somebody who knows
what he's doing.

He knows what he's doing
is wrong,

and yet,
he's still continuing to do it.

-On the 22nd of May, 1981,

Mr. Justice Boreham
sentenced Peter Sutcliffe

to 20 life sentences

and a minimum of
30 years imprisonment

before being considered
for parole.

He was immediately sent

to Parkhurst Prison
on the Isle of Wight.

Despite being declared sane
at his trial,

in 1984, Sutcliffe was diagnosed
with paranoid schizophrenia

and transferred
to Broadmoor Secure Hospital

in Berkshire.

-There's a real difference
between prison

and secure hospital,

so prison is a place
for prisoners, for offenders.

Secure hospitals are a place

for people who are ill
who need treatment.

A lot of people speculate that
his paranoid schizophrenia

was something that
actually developed in prison.

He was somebody who was
vulnerable to this anyway,

but because of the stress

of the circumstances
of being in prison,

it triggered
the symptoms in him.

-In 2010, a High Court judge
ruled that Sutcliffe's sentence

should be increased
to a whole-life tariff,

meaning he'll never be released
from prison.

And in 2016, Sutcliffe was moved
out of Broadmoor

and back into prison
at Frankland in County Durham.

He is, without doubt,

one of the most
infamous murderers in the U.K.

-Britain is not a country
which has a reputation

for serial killers.

I think that's why it grabbed
the public's attention

to the degree that it did.

-30 years after
Peter Sutcliffe's killing spree,

the world is very different --
very, very different.

You don't see people
walking about

in the way that they did
30, 40 years ago.

Nowadays,
everybody's very cautious.

Everybody's worried.

-I think Peter Sutcliffe
has become

this kind of iconic figure,
this kind of criminal celebrity,

and I think we need to be
a bit cautious about that.

We're gonna lose sight
of the victims --

the people whose lives were lost
in his killing spree.

It's become more about him
than it has about them now.

-Sutcliffe's legacy casts
a deathly shadow

over the lives he took
and the lives he left behind.

-Peter Sutcliffe is never far
from the headlines, you know?

Barely a few months go past

without some mention of him
in a national newspaper,

and he is a notorious figure.

-In the years since
his conviction,

Sutcliffe has admitted
carrying out

a collection
of other attacks on women,

including two back in 1975
before his first murder --

Anna Rogulskyj and Olive Smelt.

He's never admitted
to the attack on Mo Lea.

-Would it make any difference

if Peter Sutcliffe confessed
that he had attacked me?

It just seems so, so unlikely.

I've had to learn
to live with the fact

that that will never happen.

-I just wish she were here

'cause I had some
good, happy times with my mum.

I just wish she were here.

It breaks my heart

knowing my son and my grandson
don't see her.

-Since his incarceration
over 35 years ago,

Sutcliffe has talked many times
about his killing spree,

regularly taking the opportunity
to seize the limelight,

but he's still yet to give
a reason for the brutal attacks.

-Peter, in my opinion,
was a ruthless,

coldhearted killer

who actually enjoyed
going out and killing.

He got a thrill.
He got a buzz.

Why he did it, only he knows.

He's never actually
given a proper explanation.

He's never given a cogent reason

for killing
in the manner that he did.

-We may never know
how many people

Sutcliffe attacked
or why he did it,

but we can be sure no woman
who crossed his path was safe.

His reign of terror
shocked the world

as he evaded capture
for over five years.

The cold-blooded
and brutal manner

in which he murdered
13 helpless women

is why the name Peter Sutcliffe,
the Yorkshire Ripper,

continues to haunt
the British public to this day.

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