Ep 8 | The Yorkshire Ripper | The Complete Account Of Peter Sutcliffe

Ep 8 | The Yorkshire Ripper | The Complete Account Of Peter Sutcliffe Between October 1975 and November 1980, Peter Sutcliffe killed thirteen women across West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester while appearing nine separate times in the files of the largest police investigation in British criminal history. This is the full account: thirteen victims, two cities, one hoax that redirected a five-year inquiry, and the traffic stop that accomplished what four hundred detectives could not. From Wilma McCann on Scott Hall Road to Jacqueline Hill in Headingley, from the five-pound note traced to a haulage yard in Shipley to the cassette tape postmarked Sunderland that was played in football grounds across the north of England, this episode covers the complete story of the Yorkshire Ripper case, the women at its center, the investigation that failed them, and the institutional reforms that followed.*******This podcast episode covers the complete documented record of the Yorkshire Ripper murders, drawing on the contemporaneous inquiry records, the published findings of the Byford Report of 1982, the trial transcripts from the Old Bailey proceedings of May 1981, the accounts of investigating officers recorded in Michael Bilton's extensive history Wicked Beyond Belief (2003), the testimony of survivors and victims' families documented in various journalistic and academic studies of the case, and the subsequent identification and conviction of John Humble in 2006. Listeners seeking further reading are directed to Richard McCann's memoir Just a Boy (2003), which documents the experience of Wilma McCann's eldest child in the aftermath of his mother's murder, and to the Byford Report itself, which became publicly available in full in 2006 and remains the most comprehensive official assessment of the investigation's failures. The surviving victims of Peter Sutcliffe's attacks have also given accounts in various formats that are available through broadcast archives. This program covers difficult material, including the details of violent deaths and the institutional failures that surrounded them. If any of the themes in this episode have raised questions or concerns for you personally, resources for support are available through your local health services.