Before you embark on The Odd Female blog series, you may find this summary of case highlights helpful. When I say ‘highlights’, I mean ‘cock-ups’.
The Peter Sutcliffe case is one of the most well-documented in British criminal history. Experts in numerous fields have dissected it for decades and nothing I say here is bringing anything new to the table. However, throughout each of my blog articles, there will be constant references to certain events and failings that made the investigation so disastrous. Case Notes outlines those unfortunate consistencies (in no particular order), to put the blogs into context for those of you who are not familiar with the finer detail. You may find it helpful to read this page before embarking on The Odd Female blogs, or you may prefer to use it as a reference along the way.
- Unacknowledged attacks
Whilst Sutcliffe’s reign of terror is famously reported to have started in 1975 with Wilma McCann, numerous crime experts and personnel who worked on the case believe he started much earlier, and was responsible for significantly more than he was accused of. A number of unsolved attacks, which are widely acknowledged as being the work of Sutcliffe, are included in my analyses, because timings, MO, evidence and eye-witness accounts, would suggest they should be. To omit them, not only gives an unrealistic overview of the crimes he committed, but also serves to discard the suffering and loss endured by the victims of those attacks. - Linkage blindness
Police refused to link certain attacks to the acknowledged series for a number of reasons. Firstly, random attacks on women cause less panic than a serial killer on the loose; and secondly, once the idea of a serial killer goes public, there’s more pressure on the police to catch him. The police were keen to avoid both scenarios, and so failed to link attacks that were quite clearly carried out by the same man. In addition, as soon as the prostitute theory went public, it would have made the police look foolish to admit all women were at risk – this was not admitted by police until later into the investigation, but even then, obvious attacks were omitted from the linked series. Why? Because police were already overwhelmed by the workload this case was creating, and they didn’t want to add to it. To this end, they dismissed some of the attacks for ludicrous reasons. For example, Ann Rooney was attacked in Leeds late in Sutcliffe’s campaign. She survived, but the case was never linked, because whilst the MO was similar to previous attacks, the hammer used on Ann wasn’t quite the same as those used in others. Sutcliffe later confessed to Ann’s attack … but was never charged for it. - Eye-witness statements ignored
A number of women who survived attacks, gave quite detailed statements to police. Marcella Claxton, for example, survived an attack in May 1976. Despite giving a description of her attacker that matched previous witness statements, Marcella was dismissed as an unreliable witness – because she had learning difficulties. Sutcliffe was eventually charged with Marcella’s attack. Tracy Browne was only 14 at the time of her attack in 1975, and on seeing a photofit of the suspect years later in the news, she recognised him as the man who’d attacked her. Tracy’s mum took her to the police station, where the receiving officer laughed it off, suggesting that she was merely jumping on some kind of morbid bandwagon. Sutcliffe later confessed to Tracy’s attack … but was never charged for it. Mo Lea’s attack late in Sutcliffe’s campaign, was disturbed by a passer-by, and Mo survived. The passer-by later enquired with police as to what would happen next. She was told: “If we decide to take this seriously, we’ll be back in touch.” How serious did it have to be? Mo had suffered stab wounds, a broken jaw and a fractured skull. Her case was abandoned. - Evidence dismissed
We know that forensic science and DNA profiling have been game-changers for modern policing. But using technological advances as an argument in defence of West Yorkshire Police, doesn’t wash. Multiple mistakes were made, which were nothing to do with forensic methods of the time, and everything to do with a lack of good old-fashioned common sense. Once such example happened early in the investigation when Sutcliffe’s boot print was found at numerous scenes. During a routine home visit, police noticed that Sutcliffe owned a pair of boots that fitted the profile of the print left at the scenes, even down to the same shoe size and a flaw on one of the heels. Senior officers, however, dismissed the boots, on the basis of them being a popular brand and common shoe size. - The photofit farce
This element of the case is worthy of a documentary all of its own, and as such, I could write copious amounts. But so as not to veer from the real purpose of my blog, I’ll summarise.
Multiple photofits were taken from eye-witnesses during the course of the investigation. Since their public release, it’s plain for even the most lay of laymen to see that all the images bear a striking resemblance to each other, and a striking resemblance to Sutcliffe. However, DS Jim Hobson decided early on in the case that no photofit should be released to the public. His reasoning was that if the killer realised police knew what he looked like, he might be inclined to change his appearance. However, it wasn’t until an internal review in 1978, that it became apparent the photofits had also been withheld internally – meaning that no officers across West Yorkshire, other departments, or forces (Sutcliffe’s campaign spread across multiple jurisdictions) had seen them. This, of course, included officers who went on to interview Sutcliffe at his home as part of their routine door-to-door inquiries. They remained blissfully unaware that the man sat in front of them was a dead ringer for all of the photofits provided by witnesses. To add insult to injury, DS Hobson was the SIO on both the Tracy Brown attack in August ’75 and Marcella Claxton in May ’76. Both provided photofits, which were hugely similar. So even though nobody else had seen them, Hobson certainly had.
When I first started researching this case, one of the questions I kept asking myself was, “Why didn’t Sutcliffe ever shave off his beard?” Well, I guess this answers my question: he never needed to. It’s one of many revelations in this case that I still struggle to process. - Bungled interviews
Between August 1969 (a full 6 years before Sutcliffe’s first ‘official’ attack on Wilma McCann), and his arrest in 1981, police interviewed Sutcliffe no less than 12 times. Sutcliffe charmed and lied his way through them all, evading any kind of suspicion. Police failed to link evidence found in his house (see point 4), and they failed to follow up his alibis for the nights of the attacks. This, despite the fact that he:
a) fit the occupation profile of the suspect (lorry-driver)
b) wore the same type and size of boots known to have been at various scenes
c) had a gap in his teeth matching bite marks found on his victims
d) worked at the haulage yard at the centre of an inquiry about a £5 note found on one of the victims (the note was traced back to the haulier, who had given it out in workers’ wages)
e) was given the nickname ‘R’ by his work colleagues due to the amount of times police had interviewed him
f) owned cars that had been spotted in red light areas multiple times during police surveillance operations
g) had already been arrested in 1969 for assaulting a prostitute by hitting her over the head with stones wrapped in a sock (she dropped the charges and he was released)
And let’s not forget his arrest in 1975 – just a few weeks after his attack on Tracy Browne and two weeks before he murdered Wilma McCann, when he was charged with theft of car tyres, and fined £25. So confounding was the list of screw-ups, that even Sutcliffe couldn’t believe it. At his trial in 1981, he said, “It was just a miracle they did not apprehend me earlier – they had all the facts.”
Quite. - The Hoax
Between March 1978 and June 1979, a series of letters and a tape recording were sent to ACC George Oldfield, who was, by then, leading the investigation. The letters were signed by ‘Jack’ in reference to Jack the R (a parallel drawn by the media, due to the police narrative that the killer was only murdering prostitutes). They included a few details of attacks that had already taken place, along with hints of future attacks. The tape recording was spoken by a man with a distinct Geordie accent, later pinpointed to Castletown in Tyne and Wear. This earned him the moniker, Wearside Jack. This turn of events changed the focus of the case completely, with Oldfield becoming obsessed with this development, refusing to consider anyone a suspect unless they had the same accent, and the same handwriting, as the person now claiming to be the killer.
A sample of Sutcliffe’s handwriting was taken routinely in October 1979. Due to the non-match, and the fact he didn’t have a Geordie accent, Sutcliffe was eliminated from inquiries.
Officers from Sunderland were drafted in to help, alongside two voice experts. All of them expressed their opinions that the letters and tape were a hoax, yet still, West Yorkshire embarked on a nationwide PR campaign costing millions, to publicise the handwriting and the recorded voice. It featured across every media outlet in the country, and the recording was being played on loud speakers in town centres, pubs and nightclubs nationwide. In September 1979, Sunderland incident room received a call from a person claiming to be responsible for the letters and the tape – confirming it was a hoax. The PC taking the call, recognised the voice as that of Wearside Jack, but the call was never made public.
In 2005, the hoax was reinvestigated by DCS Chris Gregg of Sunderland police. He found a small piece of the envelope from one of the letters in the evidence archive. DNA profiling matched it to John Humble, who was arrested and charged in 2006 with four counts of perverting the course of justice; he was jailed for eight years. Humble died from alcohol-related problems on July 30th, 2019, aged 63.
Like I said before, words have power and their misuse has consequences. This distraction, fuelled by Oldfield’s complete tunnel vision, allowed Sutcliffe free reign to attack eight more women, murdering five of them. Might those women have been spared if those letters had never been written? Sutcliffe later commented that Humble had “blood on his hands.” Take from that what you will.
Criminal Sentences 