By Mark Langabeer, Newton Abbot Labour Party member
Liza William’s, a film maker, has conducted a three-part investigation into the bludgeoning of over twenty women by Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper and it is televised in a three-part series by BBC4. Thirteen women were murdered and, as most of the attacks took place in the Yorkshire, during the man-hunt, the press coined the expression Yorkshire Ripper. This was, of course, in reference to the notorious Jack the Ripper, of Victorian times. Like ‘Jack’ , the Yorkshire murderer, later shown to be Peter Sutcliffe, appeared to target prostitutes.
The attacks took place between 1975 and 81. The first was in the Chapeltown district of Leeds. It was regarded as a rundown area and a haunt for prostitution. Wilma McCann, a single mum of four, was murdered with a hammer and multiple stab wounds. At the time the attack attracted only local news coverage and reporters were told by police that the victim was likely to be a prostitute. Williams investigated this and found there was no concrete evidence that she was. This was an assumption based on the fact that she lived and socialized in the area and was last seen leaving a night-club.
This became a theme and a direction of travel for the police. It was someone who had a ‘hatred for prostitutes’. A detective argued that it was harder to track down killers of prostitutes, because they are less likely to have known their attackers. It was also the case that during the 70s there were fewer forensic tools than there are today. As Williams explains, the failure to apprehend Sutcliffe was due to other factors, not least the social attitudes of those that led the investigations.
Prostitutes fined for soliciting
Williams argues that Sutcliffe could have been apprehended earlier, if the prejudices of those leading the investigations had been removed. There was an attack on a 14-year old near a farm, 25 miles away from Chapletown. with the same MO as the McCann case, and with a good description of the assailant. It matched exactly that of Macela Claxton, also a survivor. Her evidence was dismissed by the Police on the grounds that her statement wasn’t credible. She was a black women with learning difficulties.
A change of mood began after a 16-year old shop assistant was murdered. She didn’t fit the profile of a prostitute and the largest manhunt in British legal history began. Police advice was for women to stay off the streets at night. The police presence in Chapeltown was huge and large numbers of prostitutes were fined for soliciting. This proved counter-productive, because they would have to ‘work the streets’ in order to pay the fines. It was also noted that nothing was done to prevent kerb-crawling.
What threw the investigation off the scent was an anonymous tape and a written letter claiming to be from the Yorkshire Ripper. George Oldfield, who led the investigation, was convinced that the tape was genuine and the hunt then started for a man who had a Geordie accent. He failed to take into account that all the information on the tape was already in the public domain. There were some other good leads which, if followed up, could have prevented further deaths.
Sutcliffe questioned nine times
As the death toll mounted and the police were no nearer to catching the killer, the Home Secretary became involved and appointed a new lead in the investigation. Sutcliffe was eventually caught when he was kerb-crawling with false number plates on the car that he was driving. A police sergeant on a routine patrol discovered a hammer and knife near where Sutcliffe was stopped in Sheffield. It later emerged that Sutcliffe had been questioned on no fewer than nine occasions during the investigations.
Williams lists numerous accounts of the prejudices of senior police officers. One of the surviving victims was a women named Olive Smelt, who was described in a report as having loose morals because she went out socialising without her husband. Many of the survivors’ statements were ignored, either they lacked ‘morals’ or they didn’t fit the narrative of the perpetrator being solely interested in murdering prostitutes .
Prostitution is not an issue of morals, but of poverty and poor social conditions. If there is a weakness in the documentary, it is that it didn’t give any account of Sutcliffe’s past or background. Psychiatrists at the trial believed that he suffered from mental health problems. In my opinion people are not born evil, they are become that way. It is environmental and social factors that shape people’s ‘morals’ and behaviours. Still, the programme is worth a watch.
It is available on BBC catch-up TV, on i-player here.
February 17, 2020
