Since the murder of Barbara Leach, Sutcliffe, to use his
own words, 'had lost the battle.'
His poem sent to the Sheffield Star echoes this view.
Sutcliffe is an intelligent man. He is by no means a man who engaged in
violent acts for fun or because he is an inherently violent person. I do
not excuse him, far from it but I understand his reason for making his
first assault on Anna Rogulsky. His wife seriously twisted him and he
hated her but he was living with her. It is a fact that some incessantly
nagging wives can drive some men to violent acts. Most would probably go
to the pub. Sonia probably had a terrible row with him earlier and he was
wandering about late at night.
The irate Irish Anna reminded him of Sonia when she was
screaming at her boyfriend after breaking his window with her shoe and
walking off in a temper. Her violent act triggered his violent act.
Masturbating while touching her intimately as she lay on the ground
probably sated him. There was no attempt to kill. I am not attempting to
psycho analyse him, but here was a man who engaged in tit for tat murders
with an evil killer who baited him. He knew he was being baited and he had
responded with murders. He was involved. He felt the enormous effect the
Ripper was having in West Yorkshire and Manchester and he wanted out. But
there was no way out because the Ripper was known to be B blood and he was
not that but nobody ever told him that. Policemen never reveal
confidential information to suspects. He didn't know the Ripper's calling
cards. The injuries were rumoured but unconfirmed.
Jacqueline Hill (left). The Ripper 'Super Squad' (above &
below right) at the murder scene
Police search the scene of Jacqueline Hill's murder (left)
Jacqueline Hill's body lies in front of a police screen
The police had interviewed him 6 times before they got the
breakthrough with my tip-off. His blood group ensured that he was not the
Ripper but there were many other reasons why the police were interested in
him. The fiver planted on Jean Jordan initially brought them to him. Later
his resemblance to Marilyn Moore's attacker was an added factor.
Then all the times his car was sighted in Lumb Lane,
Bradford and Chapletown, Leeds, the areas where prostitutes hang about.
His handwriting and accent was compared with the Geordie letter writers
and no resemblance found, and his teeth pattern and blood group ensured he
could not be the Ripper. Once I gave Holland the breakthrough tip-off they
were waiting for, the police were not terribly interested in a copy cat
killer. They knew a few of the murders fell into "a grey area" and all of
the assaults. However the hunt was geared to getting the Ripper, not the
peripheral nutter.
The Ripper was also the man who sent the letters and tape
recording. The police were sure of this. It was an easy matter to
eliminate the nutters who said they were the Ripper, and Sutcliffe was one
of these.
It was also easy to eliminate any suspect who came to their
notice or who was reported. Thousands of people were eliminated but
Sutcliffe was thoroughly eliminated as the Ripper, 12 times over, because
he kept coming back to the fray. He wanted to be the Ripper.
I gave the police the vital breakthrough on 17 November
1979.
Within days Tracey had a serious car accident. The previous
murder had been on 1st September and Sutcliffe's next attack was on a
newspaper reporter in Ilkley, who had written about the Ripper. Her attack
was not associated with the Ripper. She may have described Sutcliffe
accurately but the police weren't interested in him. They knew him
intimately and they were sure he was not the Ripper. The breakthrough,
with Tracey in the frame, was the cause of much elation in the top ranks
of the police. The middle and lower ranks were kept in the dark.
The big boys wanted all the glory for themselves. They
spoke with confidence of getting him for the first time. They referred to
him as a bastard for the first time. They stated for the first time that
they were sure to get him. They looked forward to knighthood's and fame.
Oldfield was drafted back from his sick bed. Their memoirs of how they
caught the Ripper would be hot property. Contingency plans were set up to
trap Tracey with blood on his hands the next time he came to the U.K. It
would be the most famous capture ever. The stakes were high.
Tension was in the air. Sutcliffe was quickly identified as
the copy cat madman whose crimes were somehow mistakenly included in the
Ripper frame. He received three more interviews with the Manchester police
who reopened their inquiries in early 1980.
They wanted him for the murder of Jean Jordan and that was
their prize from West Yorkshire. They would have to wait for him. The
Ripper was the big prize. The police knew Tracey would not admit to
anything. They would not take him easily. Here was a hardened criminal who
would look for every loophole in the law. If they tried to arrange his
extradition from Ireland, Tracey had connections with the I.R.A. and he
would claim immunity.
They might never get him .He also had psychiatrists who
would say he was a patient and mentally abnormal. Tracey had recovered
from his accident and could operate normally quickly. He had sued for
damages relating to his accident and got sixteen thousand pounds in an
incredibly short time. He was involved in a number of serious assaults in
Ireland that year. His attacks were high profile. He committed one hammer
attack on his own nephew whom he enticed into his house. He was seeking to
sue the hospital which treated him for damages. He was attending a mental
hospital as an additional insurance. He had a thousand and one other
things on his mind and the hammer attack could be interpreted as a "come
and get me" call to the West Yorkshire police.
They badly wanted him caught on the job, both to secure a
conviction, but more I suspect to demonstrate their ability. But they
hadn't counted on Sutcliffe spoiling their plans. They daren't arrest him
or it would scare Tracey off.
They weren't sure if the killers were in touch with one
another. They had to leave him free and get Tracey first. It was a
balancing act and they were holding their breath.
Sutcliffe had been described by Dr Bandara and Teresa Sykes
and possibly by Maureen Lee, and now he was back outside the same Kentucky
chicken shop where he had waited, before following to attack the Chinese
student. He was going to repeat the attack. It was a year to the day since
I had given the police the big breakthrough and Tracey had kept away all
this time.
Sutcliffe was well known to them and now this strangely
acting and odd man would be described later by a new set of witnesses. His
Rover car was also described by witnesses. He drove it the wrong way down
a one way street to attract attention to himself. The murder of Jacqueline
Hill lacked all the credentials of a Ripper attack. Evidence was given in
the Old Bailey that she would have survived had she been found that night.
The injuries therefore it can be concluded were not fatal, none of the
Ripper's hammer blows to the head or stabbing at the vital organs and
rearrangement of the body.
Laying outside injured all night on a cold, wet and windy
November night would probably kill most people. Professor Gee said she was
not the Ripper's 13th victim.
The newspaper headlines all discounted the Ripper on the
basis of Professor Gee's forensic examination that first day. Her killing
attracted much criticism for the police who were blamed for not searching
for her, once alerted by the other students.
The girl, Andre Proctor, who saw Sutcliffe attacking Jackie
must have given the police a description. They asked her not to disclose
what she knew.
Sutcliffe deliberately made his attack in the view of at
least this witness. There were other witnesses also.
I believe that the frequency of these attacks by Sutcliffe
panicked the police into a change of tactics. They didn't know that
Sutcliffe had a Divine mission to be apprehended as the Ripper, but they
knew it was him who had killed Jacqueline Hill.
I think that he was telling The West Yorkshire police
that he was the Ripper in 1980 but without success. They would dismiss him
as a madman. Only the top brass knew the tactics and they were the bosses.
Lower ranking police who were suspicious of all the attacks by this
bearded maniac were sidelined. Sutcliffe would have to tell an outside
police force.
At the Derbyshire police conference referred to in Roger
Cross' book the tactical decision was made that would change the focus of
the entire investigation. It was a degree of panic with all the attacks by
Sutcliffe which pushed Oldfield into this. Knowing that it was Peter
Sutcliffe who murdered Jacqueline Hill, they would signal to Tracey that
they were not on to him by including the Hill murder in the Ripper frame
and stating that they believed that the Ripper lived in Leeds. Maybe they
felt he would never return or may feel that they knew his identity and
they wanted to reassure him that they were not on to him.
There followed an unexpected massive outburst of public
anger against the police which produced more internal police changes.
Oldfield was taken off the Ripper case and replaced by Jim Hobson and an
outside team of independent investigators was drafted in to take an
independent look at all the evidence. It was more PR to buy time.
This bearded dark average size man who had attacked Marilyn
Moore, Doctor Bandara, Teresa Sykes, Maureen Lee and now Jacqueline Hill
was a high priority.
They knew he had a large square shaped car. The police who
had eliminated Peter Sutcliffe 12 times must surely have thought about
him. Private detective Jim Lyness had a phone call from a man saying the
Ripper was a lorry driver living in Bingley.
Trevor Birdsall , his friend wrote and subsequently went to
the police to report Sutcliffe. He informed them that he was an eye
witness to a Ripper attack.
Olive Smelt told them her attacker phoned her again.
Marilyn Moore claims she saw him in the Gaity pub and reported him then.
Who would know him better than her? David Yallop the author of "Deliver us
from Evil" was able to tell Oldfield in June 1980 that the Ripper was a
lorry driver living in the Baildon Bingley Shipley area of Bradford. How
did he know that before Sutcliffe's arrest?
Mr Sickert, the London author of a book about Jack the
Ripper was being badgered by Sutcliffe in London, and had reported him on
a few occasions to the West Yorkshire police.
He was on the point of travelling to Yorkshire when he read
about Sutcliffe's arrest.
There were several articles in the London Times in 1980
about this suspect and Reporters wondering why he was not arrested.
Sutcliffe himself was probably the person who brought Leeds to a
standstill one day when he phoned saying he was the Ripper and would
strike that day.
Leeds was holding its breath and Sutcliffe actually
travelled to Leeds with his wife in the big Rover car probably with all his
hammers etc hoping to be arrested in the city dragnet as he went shopping
away from his own city.
Gordon Burn's book says Sonia remarked about the eerie city
to a neighbour after that drive. Whatever Oldfield's reason, in that
twenty four hours of debate after the Hill murder, this was the turning
point of the investigation, for within six weeks the West Yorkshire police
would be hoisted on their own petard with the self arranged arrest of the
well described killer of Jacqueline Hill in Sheffield. Oldfield had put
her murder in the Ripper frame and that meant they would have to charge
him with a Ripper murder.
Billy Tracey was watching their performance on tv from an
armchair in a neighbour's house in Clara, County Offaly, a three hour
journey away, but safely in another jurisdiction, as he smoked a big joint
of marijuana and revelled in their discomfort. It was his finest hour and
incredible as it may seem he psychoanalyzed his automaton, suddenly
revealed, Sutcliffe, and his wife Sonia. When he saw Ronald Gregory and
George Oldfield being interviewed about the arrest and saying they were
"all delighted, absolutely delighted" one can see why he was so certain
and sure of his own position in the affair.
