Peter Sutcliffe - Biography - IMDb Peter Sutcliffe Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (1) | Trivia (9) | Personal Quotes (2) Overview (3) The Yorkshire Ripper Mini Bio (1) British serial killer, Peter Sutcliffe, who is infamous as the 'Yorkshire Ripper' was born under fairly normal surroundings. His father John Sutcliffe was a mill owner. Peter was very attached to his mother Kathleen. He was a loner in school and his grades were generally poor. Peter quit school at 15. He loved to visit the local wax museum where he was fascinated by specimens that showed the effect of venereal disease on the body. He worked as a municipal gravedigger and mortuary assistant for a while. During this period he was known to steal things from the bodies he was burying. Some of his early tendencies towards necrophilia may have stemmed from here. He would later tell authorities that it was during this time that he started hearing the voice of God coming from a grave telling him to 'rid the world of harlots'. He attempted his first murder in 1969 with a home made weapon - a sock filled with bricks.

On 2 occasions his victims escaped. On Oct 30, 1975 however he had perfected his m.o. He used a ball peen hammer to bludgeon his victim to death. Then he stabbed them with a chisel or screwdriver to mutilate their bodies. He killed mainly in the cities of Leeds, Bradford and in the Yorkshire area and 1 murder in the Lancashire city of Manchester.His victims were all women. Though the majority were prostitutes, he also began killing college students towards the end - the only common factor being they were lone women who were out late. The age range of his victims was 16 to 47. One of his victims was even killed in her own apartment. In one case Sutcliffe actually revisited the crime scene a week later to further mutilate the body before it was finally found by the police. Sutcliffe was a schizoid personality who was able to remain a devoted husband at home while still committing his brutal crimes outside. When Sutcliffe's mother died on November 8, 1978 there was an 11 month 'cooling-off' period. The largest manhunt in Britsh history was launched to catch the 'Ripper'.

It involved interviewing 250,000 people and searching 20,000 houses. In June 1979 the police were sidetracked when they received a hoax tape and letters from someone claiming to be the ripper. Sutcliffe who was interviewed was dismissed as a suspect because he did not have the 'Wearside accent' of the hoax tape. The last 'Ripper' murder took place on 17 Nov 1980. There had been 13 victims with 7 attempted murders. On January 2, 1981 Sutcliffe was arrested by the police for displaying false number plates on his Rover car. (The number plates actually belonged to a Skoda.) Peter Sutcliffe had stolen the plates from a scrapyard in nearby Dewsbury. on his Rover P6 and propositioning a prostitute. He requested permission to 'pee' before going to the station. The next day, while he was being questioned at the station, the arresting policeman decided to go and check the bushes where Sutcliffe had urinated. He found a hammer and chisel behind some shrubbery. Sutcliffe quickly confessed to his crimes.

he said he harbored a vendetta against prostitutes after one of them had swindled him of money and given him a venereal disease. On May 22, 1981 he was declared guilty of committing 13 murders and sentenced to spend not less than 30 yrs in prison. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Sujit R. Varma Spouse (1) Trivia (9) He claimed that God's voice emanating from a grave, had ordered him to kill. He was attacked by a fellow inmate James Costello in Parkhurst Prison, on January 10 1983. He survived but has a facial scar. He killed 13 women between the ages of 16 and 47 from October 30, 1975 till his arrest on January 2, 1981. Has been diagnosed to have paranoid schizophrenia. Was a lorry driver. Was interviewed a surprising 9 times by the police in connections with the murders in and around Manchester and West Yorkshire as a potential 'suspect' but released each time! Was a gravedigger.

Notorious - Season 2, Episode 27: The Yorkshire Ripper - TV.com The Yorkshire Ripper AIRED: 4/15/05 The Yorkshire Ripper from the Biography Channel series Notorious details the disturbing case of Peter Sutcliffe, who killed 13 women and attacked at least 7 others between 1969 and 1980. His trademark technique was attacking women with a hammer or sharpened screwdriver. Although Sutcliffe was arrested several times, and considered a suspect, he was not convicted until 1980, which led to an internal inquiry of the Yorkshire police department.moreless Join the discussion of this episode Episode Discussion Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions See All Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions Trivia & Quotes Share this Episode NEW ABC Important: You must only upload images which you have created yourself or that you are expressly authorised or licensed to upload. By clicking "Publish", you are confirming that the image fully complies with TV.com’s Terms of Use and that you own all rights to the image or have authorization to upload it. Please read the following before uploading Do not upload anything which you do not own or are fully licensed to upload.

The images should not contain any sexually explicit content, race hatred material or other offensive symbols or images. Remember: Abuse of the TV.com image system may result in you being banned from uploading images or from the entire site – so, play nice and respect the rules! Choose background: The Real Yorkshire Ripper Roger Ratcliffe. Sunday Times Insight journalist. "I couldn't put it down, I stayed up all night reading it" Posted By Andrew Abram (message board) : Between 1975 and 1981 a series of more than a dozen ritualistic and vicious murders terrorised the north of England, and caused one of the largest manhunts in British criminal history. His victims were mainly prostitutes, as well as other vunerable women and girls. The murders were seemingly connected by the killer's m.o., and were accompanied by chilling letters and an infamous tape recording sent to the police, which accurately promised more killings. Encompassing the West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Lancashire police regions, the investigation employed up to 350 detectives for five years and cost over 4.

In January 1981 Ronald Gregory, Chief Constable of the West Yorkshire Constabulary, announced that a man was being held in connection with the murders. Bradford lorry driver Peter Sutcliffe confessed to all of the offences, except one, and was subsequently convicted at the Old Bailey for the murders of thirteen women. First published in 1989, 'The Real Yorkshire Ripper' presents a compelling and disturbing challenge to the accepted official version of events, perpetuated by the media, books and recent T.V. programmes, by offering convincing evidence that Sutcliffe was a copy-cat killer, guilty of onlt four of the murders he 'confessed' to. His m.o. was fundamentally to the other killer's, and, rather than being interviewed and 'released' twelve times by the police, he was eliminated by them because hi blood group and teeth marks were unlike those of the suspect they were hunting. The police knew that he was not the ripper. Bite marks, semen and saliva left on some of the victims, as well as saliva and bite marks on an envelope belonging to letters sent to the police, releaved that the Ripper possessed B blood group, whilst Sutcliffe's was group O.

Mr Ogara's evidence shows that detectives knes that two men were responsible for the murders, and as early as 1976 they possessed a despcription of their prime suspect, known to be a 'stocky bearded Irishman' with stained teeth, gold rings, tatoos and scars. Numerous press reports confirmed this. For example, on 28 March 1978 the 'Daily Mail' reported a 'Copy-Cat Ripper at Large', while in 1980 the 'Sunday Times Insight' stated '[Assistant Chief Constable George] Oldfield conceded to us - that there is not one Ripper, but - at least - two'. Likewise, many newspapers in 1976 and 1977 carried accurate descriptions of the bearded Irish suspect.

'The Real Yorkshire Ripper' points out that faced with enormous operational errors and desperate to conclude the enquiry, the West Yorkshire Police, lead by Gregory, Oldfield and Detective Chief Superintendent James Hobson, concocted a 'deal' with Sutcliffe, in which they accepted his 'confession' to all the murders in return for Detective Chief Superintendent Dick Holland's promise of no trial and a private room in a psychiatric hospital, with the possibility of parole after ten years. Sutcliffe's 'confession' remains highly questionable, especially as the officer most closely involved in it, Holland, was responsible for the 'confession' of the vunerable Stefan Kiszko for the murder of Lesley Moleseed in 1975/6 (of which Holland faced serious criminal charges). Critically, O'Gara asserts that the real Ripper was not a hoaxer, but was responsible for the 'Geordie' letters and tape, not only to deride the police, but in order to implicate the carbon-copy killer. As the former employer of the man he identifies as the real Ripper, O'Gara appears to possess a particular ewareness of the case.

Both during and after the enquiry he attempted to present his evidence to the police, but was met by suspicion, closed attitudes and an unwillingness to comminucate with him. His book convincingly reconstructs the police prosecution of the case, their framing of the psychologically unbalanced Sutcliffe, and the extent of the police deception, described by O'Gara as 'the cover-up of the century'. Moreover, it reveals a picture of Billy Tracy as a cruel and manipulative psychopath, who is apparently at large in the UK. It is also possible that he is resposible for other murders and serious offences. By writing this book Mr O'Gara has thus placed himself in a potentially dangerous position. Although the findings of the book have been officially denied or ignored, it is a highly significant document that demands serious attention. The extent of the cover-up and the level at which particular senior policemen are implicated is both criminally and morally significant as it undermines the victims, their families, the Sutcliffe family, the public at large, and the truth, whilst failing to identify, apprehend and convict the man who perpetrated the majority of the murders. Posted By attymarco (message board) : Dear Mr.

O'Gara, I'm truly intrigued by your website. I was living in Manchester during the ripper period and well remember the publicity surrounding the manhunt. After Sutcliffe was arrested and convicted, I recall speaking with a friend, who was then stationed at Bootle Street nick, who was adamant that Sutcliffe wasn't guilty of all the murders and that there was an "Irish connection" to the killings. At the time, I didn't pay much heed to this as it was really just said in passing over a pint. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since Sutcliffe went down. Subsequent revelations about police methods of clearing up crimes in the seventies and eighties have caused a lot of us to pause and examine the evidence. Mr. O'Gara. You may be quite potty. You may well lead the reader into a labyrinth far more sinister that the one encountered by Theseus but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and, with an open mind, I'll buy and read your book. I'll write you again when I've read it. Lastly, did you ever correspond with Paul Foot on this subject?

Regards, THE NEWSPAPERS ROLE comment by Noel O'Gara The Tabloid press made a meal of Barry George because he was convicted in Court and because of Jill Dando and her association with Crimewatch there is great public interest. Copy and outrageous pictures like the one with a gas mask on George will sell millions of newspapers. That's the name of the game. What many of the public dont realise is that a few sensational stories such as this are used by the newspapers which are making millions of pounds selling advertising space in 50 per cent of the paper. The ads are sold off the backs of the news stories which are of much greater interest to the reader. A single small classified ad costs about 50 pounds and a quarter page can cost many thousands. Thats why they use sensational stories like this to increase circulation figures and thus to generate higher advertising revenue. Newspapers are neither charitable nor philantropic organisations. Robert Maxwell comes to mind. They are huge profit making corporations which sell advertising space off the back of spicy public interest stories such as this. Fred West,Ronnie Biggs and the like gave them great mileage or sales potential. Then comes page 3 pornography. Who wants to read boring political stuff anyway?

Their paper with advertisements alone would not sell, period. They sold millions of papers on the back of the Yorkshire Ripper over 5 years and then on Peter Sutcliffe's trial and aftermath because the courts convicted him and they continued to perpetuate the lie that Sutcliffe was the Ripper with follow up stories over the years. They dont care that the hit man who shot Dando is having a pint around the corner while he is polishing his silencer nor that the Real Yorkshire Ripper is living it up in the West End of London today. Selling newspapers is their business. Reply to Keith Brannen by a reader Dear Keith Brannen, regarding your comments and criticisms of Noel's book, I would just like to congratulate you on your apparently extensive library and your self-confessed knowledge of murder cases. I, and no doubt many others have read quite a bit on serial killers, but you seem to fall into the familiar trap of appearing to proclaim yourself as some kind of 'expert'.

To my mind, one of the major hurdles to serious investigations into certain cases, such as the Whitechapel murderer and the Yorkshire Ripper is that there are so many 'experts' who claim to know all the 'facts' and will not or cannot be deflected from their theories. In defence of Mr O'Gara, he states clearly in his book that there are inconsistencies in his argument that require further explanation and possibly research. What surprises me is that if you are as well read as you say, you cannot or will not see that the police handling of the Yorkshire Ripper case was shambolic and to some degree criminally negligent. I have recently read an excellent book on the Stephan Kishko case, which outlines the largely criminal actions of Dick Holland in obtaining a 'confession'. I really don't see how anyone can read anything on the ripper case without getting the impression that the police were and still are involved in a major cover-up, as well as a serious manipulation of the 'evidence', including the various books and tv programmes that have appeared subsequently.

Whatever your views are regarding the case and Noel's argument, you are entitled to them, but please stand back from the official 'evidence' for a moment and another, more realistic picture might reveal itself. Reviews | THE REAL YORKSHIRE RIPPER STORY THE REAL YORKSHIRE RIPPER STORY Roger Ratcliffe. Sunday Times Insight journalist. “I couldn’t put it down. I stayed up all night reading it” ============== This review of my self published book was received from Colin Wilson on 14 october 2004. Colin Wilson is one of the top selling authors of true crime works in the UK of many years standing. Therefore his opinion is valuable. ‘When Noel O’Gara first sent me his book The Real Yorkshire Ripper, my first reaction was scepticism. I had written about the case several times, read books about it, and had no doubt whatever that Peter Sutcliffe was the one and only Yorkshire Ripper. Then an Irish friend, a Dubliner, came to stay with me, found the book on my crime shelves, and immediately became totally absorbed in it.

And I was surprised when, after reading it from beginning to end, he told me that the author had convinced him that Sutcliffe was not the only Yorkshire Ripper, and that Noel O’Gara’s suspect might well, as the author insisted, be the original Ripper. I have no doubt that my friend, being Irish like the author and his suspect Billy Tracey, simply felt that the whole story somehow ‘rang true’. Then I read the book myself, and began to see why. Noel O’Gara, it seems, was a highly successful businesss man and property developer when he met Billy Tracey who, like so many of his countrymen, is a man of considerable charm, wit and humour –‘a comedian’, as O’Gara says. So it came about that Tracey became O’Gara’s friend, then his employee, and Tracey moved into his house. O’Gara knew that Tracey had spent many years in prison, mostly in short stretches, but that he was a Category A prisoner, ‘high security’. He talked freely about his past, and O’Gara found his anti-authoritanism appealing, since he shared the feeling.

But as Billy talked about his crimes, and how he had often fooled the police, it slowly dawned on O’Gara that he was living with a ‘controlled psychopath’ with a grudge against women. And when his guest tried to persuade him that they should take O’Gara’s beautiful Dutch girlfriend into a field and murder her, O’Gara was sufficiently concerned to send her back to Holland. This is while the Yorkshire Ripper murders were going on. And it was when he read the psychological profile of the unknown killer released by the police that O’Gara became suddenly convinced that this was his friend Bill Tracey. It was, he told me, ‘as if an amazing connection had been triggered’. In a state of shock, he began reviewing all the evidence, hoping he was wrong and could forget the whole thing. The more he studied it, the more convinced he became that he was right.

Peter Sutcliffe, the man who is serving a life sentence for the Ripper murders, was arrested on January 2, 1981, and there can be little doubt that he was responsible for some of the murders with which he is charged, and that he had every intention of killing the prostitute, Olive Reivers, who was in his car at the time of his arrest. But it is O’Gara’s belief that Sutcliffe was basically a ‘copycat’ killer, and that Tracey is ‘the real Yorkshire Ripper’. He argues that the Yorkshire police suspected this, and that they were glad enough to close the case and see ‘the Yorkshire Ripper’ behind bars. It is not, he says, in their interest to pursue his own conviction that there was more than one Yorkshire Ripper. I read the original draft of Noel O’Gara’s book, and listened to the tapes of his conversations with the man he believes to be as guilty as Sutcliffe, and ended up convinced that he could be right. But I also recognised that, right or not, no one now ever going to want to re-open the case.

I recognise that Noel O’Gara is a man with an obsession, and that men with obsessions arouse suspicions in the rest of us. But if he is correct, then his obsession is perfectly understandable, and what he has to say deserves to be looked into. That is, for obvious reasons, as far as I am prepared to go. Except to say that I believe that those who are willing to look into The Real Yorkshire Ripper will find themselves as concerned and disturbed by it as I was.’ Sent By Andrew Abram Between 1975 and 1981 a series of more than a dozen ritualistic and vicious murders terrorised the north of England, and caused one of the largest manhunts in British criminal history. His victims were mainly prostitutes, as well as other vunerable women and girls. The murders were seemingly connected by the killer’s m.o., and were accompanied by chilling letters and an infamous tape recording sent to the police, which accurately promised more killings. Encompassing the West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Lancashire police regions, the investigation employed up to 350 detectives for five years and cost over 4.

In January 1981 Ronald Gregory, Chief Constable of the West Yorkshire Constabulary, announced that a man was being held in connection with the murders. Bradford lorry driver Peter Sutcliffe confessed to all of the offences, except one, and was subsequently convicted at the Old Bailey for the murders of thirteen women. First published in 1989, ‘The Real Yorkshire Ripper’ presents a compelling and disturbing challenge to the accepted official version of events, perpetuated by the media, books and recent T.V. programmes, by offering convincing evidence that Sutcliffe was a copy-cat killer, guilty of onlt four of the murders he ‘confessed’ to. His m.o. was fundamentally to the other killer’s, and, rather than being interviewed and ‘released’ twelve times by the police, he was eliminated by them because hi blood group and teeth marks were unlike those of the suspect they were hunting. The police knew that he was not the ripper. Bite marks, semen and saliva left on some of the victims, as well as saliva and bite marks on an envelope belonging to letters sent to the police, releaved that the Ripper possessed B blood group, whilst Sutcliffe’s was group O.

Mr Ogara’s evidence shows that detectives knes that two men were responsible for the murders, and as early as 1976 they possessed a despcription of their prime suspect, known to be a ‘stocky bearded Irishman’ with stained teeth, gold rings, tatoos and scars. Numerous press reports confirmed this. For example, on 28 March 1978 the ‘Daily Mail’ reported a ‘Copy-Cat Ripper at Large’, while in 1980 the ‘Sunday Times Insight’ stated ‘[Assistant Chief Constable George] Oldfield conceded to us – that there is not one Ripper, but – at least – two’. Likewise, many newspapers in 1976 and 1977 carried accurate descriptions of the bearded Irish suspect.

‘The Real Yorkshire Ripper’ points out that faced with enormous operational errors and desperate to conclude the enquiry, the West Yorkshire Police, lead by Gregory, Oldfield and Detective Chief Superintendent James Hobson, concocted a ‘deal’ with Sutcliffe, in which they accepted his ‘confession’ to all the murders in return for Detective Chief Superintendent Dick Holland’s promise of no trial and a private room in a psychiatric hospital, with the possibility of parole after ten years. Sutcliffe’s ‘confession’ remains highly questionable, especially as the officer most closely involved in it, Holland, was responsible for the ‘confession’ of the vunerable Stefan Kiszko for the murder of Lesley Moleseed in 1975/6 (of which Holland faced serious criminal charges). Critically, O’Gara asserts that the real Ripper was not a hoaxer, but was responsible for the ‘Geordie’ letters and tape, not only to deride the police, but in order to implicate the carbon-copy killer. As the former employer of the man he identifies as the real Ripper, O’Gara appears to possess a particular ewareness of the case.

Both during and after the enquiry he attempted to present his evidence to the police, but was met by suspicion, closed attitudes and an unwillingness to comminucate with him. His book convincingly reconstructs the police prosecution of the case, their framing of the psychologically unbalanced Sutcliffe, and the extent of the police deception, described by O’Gara as ‘the cover-up of the century’. Moreover, it reveals a picture of Billy Tracy as a cruel and manipulative psychopath, who is apparently at large in the UK. It is also possible that he is resposible for other murders and serious offences. By writing this book Mr O’Gara has thus placed himself in a potentially dangerous position. Although the findings of the book have been officially denied or ignored, it is a highly significant document that demands serious attention. The extent of the cover-up and the level at which particular senior policemen are implicated is both criminally and morally significant as it undermines the victims, their families, the Sutcliffe family, the public at large, and the truth, whilst failing to identify, apprehend and convict the man who perpetrated the majority of the murders. ============== Sent by attymarco Dear Mr.

O’Gara, I’m truly intrigued by your website. I was living in Manchester during the ripper period and well remember the publicity surrounding the manhunt. After Sutcliffe was arrested and convicted, I recall speaking with a friend, who was then stationed at Bootle Street nick, who was adamant that Sutcliffe wasn’t guilty of all the murders and that there was an “Irish connection” to the killings. At the time, I didn’t pay much heed to this as it was really just said in passing over a pint. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since Sutcliffe went down. Subsequent revelations about police methods of clearing up crimes in the seventies and eighties have caused a lot of us to pause and examine the evidence. Mr. O’Gara. You may be quite potty. You may well lead the reader into a labyrinth far more sinister that the one encountered by Theseus but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and, with an open mind, I’ll buy and read your book. I’ll write you again when I’ve read it. Lastly, did you ever correspond with Paul Foot on this subject?

Regards, THE NEWSPAPERS ROLE comment by Noel O’Gara The Tabloid press made a meal of Barry George because he was convicted in Court and because of Jill Dando and her association with Crimewatch there is great public interest. Copy and outrageous pictures like the one with a gas mask on George will sell millions of newspapers. That’s the name of the game. What many of the public dont realise is that a few sensational stories such as this are used by the newspapers which are making millions of pounds selling advertising space in 50 per cent of the paper. The ads are sold off the backs of the news stories which are of much greater interest to the reader. A single small classified ad costs about 50 pounds and a quarter page can cost many thousands. Thats why they use sensational stories like this to increase circulation figures and thus to generate higher advertising revenue. Newspapers are neither charitable nor philantropic organisations. Robert Maxwell comes to mind. They are huge profit making corporations which sell advertising space off the back of spicy public interest stories such as this. Fred West,Ronnie Biggs and the like gave them great mileage or sales potential. Then comes page 3 pornography. Who wants to read boring political stuff anyway?

Their paper with advertisements alone would not sell, period. They sold millions of papers on the back of the Yorkshire Ripper over 5 years and then on Peter Sutcliffe’s trial and aftermath because the courts convicted him and they continued to perpetuate the lie that Sutcliffe was the Ripper with follow up stories over the years. They dont care that the hit man who shot Dando is having a pint around the corner while he is polishing his silencer nor that the Real Yorkshire Ripper is living it up in the West End of London today. Selling newspapers is their business. ============== Reply to Keith Brannen by a reader Dear Keith Brannen, regarding your comments and criticisms of Noel’s book, I would just like to congratulate you on your apparently extensive library and your self-confessed knowledge of murder cases. I, and no doubt many others have read quite a bit on serial killers, but you seem to fall into the familiar trap of appearing to proclaim yourself as some kind of ‘expert’.

To my mind, one of the major hurdles to serious investigations into certain cases, such as the Whitechapel murderer and the Yorkshire Ripper is that there are so many ‘experts’ who claim to know all the ‘facts’ and will not or cannot be deflected from their theories. In defence of Mr O’Gara, he states clearly in his book that there are inconsistencies in his argument that require further explanation and possibly research. What surprises me is that if you are as well read as you say, you cannot or will not see that the police handling of the Yorkshire Ripper case was shambolic and to some degree criminally negligent. I have recently read an excellent book on the Stephan Kishko case, which outlines the largely criminal actions of Dick Holland in obtaining a ‘confession’. I really don’t see how anyone can read anything on the ripper case without getting the impression that the police were and still are involved in a major cover-up, as well as a serious manipulation of the ‘evidence’, including the various books and tv programmes that have appeared subsequently.

Whatever your views are regarding the case and Noel’s argument, you are entitled to them, but please stand back from the official ‘evidence’ for a moment and another, more realistic picture might reveal itself. Debbie Steedman Having just read Noel’s amazing book regarding the real Ripper I feel compelled to put my feelings on paper. Not only is this book a fascinating read, it is immensely upsetting to think that the British Police Force were not prepared to listen to what Noel had to say regarding the man he feels is the Real Ripper. I have no doubt that Noel’s findings are true. The book is not a book of fiction but one of fact that has taken years of painstaking research to rid us the British Public of a menace to society. To this end the Real Ripper still walks free. An unforgettable read. Kind regards 050 551 2502 Mr P ( name withheld) Generally speaking, Noel O’Gara is right about newspapers such as the Daily Mail. I want to write some more on that later today, although no one is forced to read anything. Personally I delete most of my emails now, as I prefer telephone contact. That’s the test of a serious reply.

Regarding the Yorkshire Ripper scandal – I agree with Noel O’Gara that Peter Sutcliffe committed only some of those murders and that the real or principal Yorkshire Ripper is still at large, unless he’s been jailed for a separate matter. A man is now awaiting trial as ‘Wearside Jack’ – meaning the man with a strong north-east English accent who sent letters and tapes to the West Yorkshire Police at the time, confessing to the murders. The man in custody is not William Tracey. The William Tracey theory has also been criticised on the ground that the principal Ripper was a driver, and William Tracey was learning to drive during his time as Noel O’Gara’s employee. A major scandal now is that modern DNA testing could prove that Peter Sutcliffe killed only some of those women and could possibly identify the principal Yorkshire Ripper, who is almost certainly known to the police in connection with other matters. It’s not going to happen. The West Yorkshire Police and the media are going to stick to the myth that Peter Sutcliffe committed all those murders. It’s too embarrassing for all concerned.

The police and the media have gone so far down the wrong road that they are not about to admit their ‘mistake’ and turn back. Case closed. The recent book by Richard McCann, son of Wilma McCann, shows how both Sutcliffe and the principal Ripper wrecked the lives of the children and parents of those murdered women. Richard McCann survived emotionally and writing and publishing his book was an integral part of his personal recovery. Other relatives of the Ripper victims didn’t do so well. That makes the police cover up about the real Ripper all the more scandalous. In short, I agree with Noel O’Gara that Peter Sutcliffe committed only some of the Yorkshire Ripper murders, and that the real Yorkshire Ripper went on killing after Sutcliffe’s arrest, while the West Yorkshire Police closed the case to cover up their blunders, and the media meekly printed unchallenged anything the police said. However, I don’t know if Noel O’Gara is right about William Tracey being the principal Ripper. William Tracey is not the major issue. The point is that there were two Rippers and only one was caught.

Noel O’Gara’s book and site and tape recordings about the Yorkshire Ripper scandal are quite fascinating and well worth a read. Jack the Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper | Jack the Ripper Jack the Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper Comments: Leave a comment Between July 1975 and January 1981, 13 women where horrifically murdered in Yorkshire, Northern England. It lead to the greatest criminal manhunt in British criminal history. The killer became known as the Yorkshire Ripper. Almost 90 years before in 1888, an unknown killer, regarded by many as the father of the modern day serial killer began a reign of terror in London’s East end district of Whitechapel. Although the actual number of his victims has been debated over the years the “official” acceptance is five. The killer became known as Jack the Ripper. To this day his identity remains unknown. Crime Historian and Jack the Ripper tour guide, Richard C Cobb investigated the United Kingdom’s most infamous serial killers and found some startling comparisons in both Ripper cases.

Background to Murder: The areas in which both killers began their reign of terror were regarded as slum quarters of the city, deprived and poverty stricken. Prostitution was rife and drunken disorder an everyday occurrence. Unemployment was high and an area where few decent people would dare to venture. Jack the Ripper would stalk the poverty slum streets of Whitechapel in London’s east end while Peter Sutcliffe – The Yorkshire ripper, chose the poverty stricken Chapel-town in the city of Leeds. The Murders Both Killers would strike only on weekends, targeting prostitutes from the red light districts. The attacks were sudden and savage, with horrific mutilations to the lower abdomen. In both Ripper cases, all but one of the victims would be murdered out doors and left to be discovered later, either by passers-by or police searches. Only one victim would be murdered indoors (Jack the Ripper – Mary Jane Kelly / Yorkshire Ripper – Patricia Atkinson) in both of those cases the victims brought the killer back to their home and were subsequently murdered in their bedroom with their bodies left lying on the bed waiting to be discovered the very next day.

The clues Both killers left clues behind for the police to follow, Jack the Ripper left behind a piece of bloody apron, cut from one of his victims. This was discovered in a doorway several streets from the murder, prompting police to conduct door to door interviews with suspects in that area. The Yorkshire Ripper left a brand new £5 note in the handbag of his victim, later traced to several trucking companies payroll. This prompted police to conduct interviews with all company employees who may have received the note in their pay packet. Letters and hoaxes In both Ripper investigations the police received letters from people claiming to be the killer. This caused a sensation and drove the media frenzy in a way never seen before in a murder case. Both ironically were signed “Jack the Ripper”. Each letter promised to continue the attacks and taunted the efforts of the investigators. In both cases, these letters were published in the newspapers in the hope that someone would recognise the handwriting. In the Yorkshire Ripper Investigation it was later discovered that the letters were in fact a hoax. Serious researchers into the Jack the Ripper murders conclude the 1888 letters were probably the work of hoaxers as well.

Hampered investigations The Ripper investigations of 1888 and the 1970’s were the largest criminal manhunts of their time. However, both were hampered by three problems: the mounting public pressure on them to find the killer; their instant belief in descriptions and letters sent in by hoaxers; and the sheer volume of information they had to process. Profile of the Ripper In 1988 leading FBI criminal profilers John Douglas and Roy Hazelwood conducted -The Ripper Project – for the first time ever they drew up a psychological profile of Jack the Ripper. When we compare their findings with what we now know about Peter Sutcliffe-the Yorkshire Ripper then the similarities really do become clear. White Male 28 -36 years old Domineering Mother / close bond Not markedly different from anyone else but perceived by family and others as a little strange or morbid. Socially detached preferred own company Poor self-image Seen by others as shy / timid character easily overlooked as a suspect. Poor Work record Unable to make advances towards women Did not kill for financial or material gain nor was a sadistic killer i.e. one who derives pleasure from inflicting pain and torture.

Both killed quickly At most dangerous following a loss of self-esteem. Likely to have committed other attacks on women that were not reported or linked together Unlikely to have sent letters to police or correspondence type of Killer does not seek this kind of attention. Finding Jack the Ripper We have seen the comparisons with both Ripper investigations and only time will tell if the comparisons stretch to the murderers themselves. In the strange case of Jack the Ripper, It might be useful to investigate earlier attacks on women in the area that were not linked to later Whitechapel murders. Serial killers evolve they start small and work their way up to much more violent crimes cultivating in murder. Many are arrested and charged with assaults/ robbery. By the time they commit a murder they already have a criminal record. One wonders if jack the Ripper was arrested during this early evolvement. If so his name may very well be still there for all to see, in an old police file that’s been left discarded in the vaults for over 125 years. Richard C Cobb conducts a Jack the Ripper tour every night of the week. Come along and decide for yourself just who was Jack the Ripper. Richard Cobb – has written 192 posts on this site.

Richard Cobb is a industry expert on everything Jack The Ripper, he is also the founding partner of The Jack The Ripper Tour which has become extremely successful over the last 3 years. The Yorkshire Ripper Letters The Yorkshire Ripper Letters From pp 377-87 of Texte zu Theorie und Praxis forensischer Linguistik 1990. Ed. Hannes Kniffka. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. The paper "The Yorkshire Ripper – A Case History" by Stanley Ellis and the present writer presented at the York Conference on Forensic Applications of Phonetics in June 1989 gave an account of our involvement in that infamous case. It did contain a summary of my investigations into the associated letters but it was mainly concerned with considering the notorious tape recording which received so much publicity. I now propose to give a full account of those letters. The tape received by the Yorkshire police purported to acknowledge responsibility for the murders of eleven women over the previous four years. Posted in mid-June 1979, it was in fact the fourth and last communication regarding the murders sent by the same person and all bearing the same postmark, that of the seaport of Sunderland in northeast England.

Previously to the tape, three letters had been received, one a little over three months earlier than the tape, and the other two a full year earlier in March 1978. The envelope in which the tape had been sent was agreed by handwriting experts to have been addressed by the same writer and there was obvious complete harmony in both content and linguistic features between the tape and the letters. Like the letters it harped on certain localities (1) the Leeds suburb of Chapeltown, (2) Bradford, and (3) Manchester. It had the same simple-minded taunting and boastful manner and the same unsophisticated word choices including fairly faded types of slang like copper, knocking about, nicked and top myself. The first two letters had been discounted by the police as most likely to have been hoaxes so that their existence was not revealed to the public. However, the third one had inclined them to treat them all seriously and it had been decided to let the public know about them. Even so, their contents were very sparingly disclosed. The main disclosures were made not then but after the tape had been received in June. The only substantial amount of any of them ever officially made public was less than a third of Letter No 1.

Apart from that there were only the separate releases of two sentences of 20 and 30 words each and of the four envelope fronts. These last were released at the same time as the tape. The number of words involved amounted to less than 200 out of the total of 700 received. To this day the remaining over 500 words are still officially secret. A request by the writer for copies of the letters to illustrate the present article was met with the fully expected polite refusal on account of their being of an evidential nature in respect of a case which was still officially open. In fact, as the summary released on the 30th of June 1983 of the secret internal police report on the case (apparently originally presented to the West Yorkshire police authority in December 1981) by Mr Colin Sampson, then deputy to and later to succeed Mr Ronald Gregory as Chief Constable of the West Yorkshire police force, candidly observed, the contents of the letters are common knowledge. Almost complete texts of all three of them appeared in print first in the rather extravagant book on the case by David A.

Yallop, entitled Deliver us from Evil, which appeared shortly after the Yorkshireman Peter Sutcliffe was convicted of the murders in the summer of 1981. As was witnessed by the book's numerous extracts from confidential police documents, its author clearly had the services of a police "mole". Internal evidence that suggested that this person might have copied the letters rather hastily was to be noted in the way that the versions contained a number of mistranscriptions including bit for lot in Letter No 1. Also, in Letter No 2, the copyist omitted a dozen words through evident failure to notice that the phrase and dont was repeated. Substitutions of murder for number and week for ones occurrred in that letter too. When my advice was requested by the police in connection with the case, very early in September 1979, I learned to my considerable surprise that, although various handwriting experts had been consulted, no-one at all had looked at the letters to see whether their linguistic characteristics might yield anything that could be of possible use in the investigations. My suggestion that I should do so was readily accepted.

I have never seen the originals, which had been lodged in Home Office archives, but the quality of the photographs of them which I was able to examine was evidently excellent. The first letter was addressed as follows. Chief Constable George Oldfield, Leeds, West Yorkshire. It was undated. The following is a precise representation of its highly idiosyncratic spelling, punctuation and capitalisation: Dear sir I am sorry I cannot give my name for obvisous reasons I am the ripper. Ive been dubbed a maniac by the press but not by you You call me clever and I am. You and your mates havent a clue That photo in the paper gave me fits and that lot about killing myself no chance Ive got things to do, My purpose to rid the streets of them sluts. my one regret his that young lassie Mcdonald did not know cause changed routine that nite, Up to number 8 now you say 7 but remember Preston 75, Get about you know, you were right I travel a bit You probably look for me in Sunderland dont bother I am not daft just posted letter there on one of my trips.

Not a bad place compared with Chapeltown and Manningham and other places Warn whores to keep off streets cause I feel it coming on again, Sorry about young lassie. Yours respectfully Jack the Ripper Might write again later I not sure last one really deserved it. Whores getting younger each time. Old slut next time I hope, Huddesfield never again too small close call last one The second letter, postmarked less than a week later, was addressed Chief Editor, It had the same topics as the first and was similarly undated. Dear sir. I have already written Chief constable, Oldfield "a man I respect" concerning the recent Ripper murders. I told him and I am telling you to warn them whores I ll strike and soon when heat cools off. About the Mcdonald lassie I did nt know that she was decent and I am sorry I changed my routine that night, Up to number 8 now You say 7 but remember Preston 75. Easy picking them up dont even have to try, you think theyre learn but they dont Most are young lassies, next time try older one I hope.

Police havent a clue yet and I dont leave any I am very clever and dont think of looking for any fingerprints cause there arent any and dont look for me up in Sunderland cause I not stupid just passed through the place not a bad place compared with Chapeltown and Manningham cant walk the streets for them whore, Dont forget warn them I feel it coming on again if I get the chance, Sorry about lassie I didnt know Yours respectfully Jack the Ripper Might write again after another ones' gone Maybe Liverpool or even Manchester again, to hot here in Yorkshire, Bye. I have given advance warning so its yours and their's fault. The third and last letter was addressed Assistant Chief Constable Oldfield, (It was the only one which the writer dated.) Dear Officer. March 23rd 79 Sorry I havn't written, about a year to be exact, but I hav'nt been up North for quite a while. I was 'nt kidding last time I wrote saying the whore would be older this time and maybe I'd strike in Manchester for a change. You should have took heed. That bit about her being in hospital, funny the lady mentioned something about being in the same hospital before I stopped her whoring ways.

The lady wont worry about hospitals now will she I bet you are wondering how come I hav'nt been to work for ages, well I would have been if it hadnt been for your curserred coppers I had the lady just where I wanted her and was about to strike when one of your cursen police cars stopped right outside the lane, he must have been a dumb copper cause he didn't say anything, he didnt know how close he was to catching me. Tell you the truth I thought I was collared, the lady said dont worry about the coppers, little did she know that bloody copper saved her neck. That was last month, so I don 't know when I will get back on the job but I know it won t be Chapeltown too bloody hot there maybe Bradfords Manningham. Might write again if up North. Jack the Ripper P S Did you get letter I sent to Daily Mirror in Manchester. This writer, then, was thoroughly functionally literate in the sense that he could perfectly well express himself in writing but really rather illiterate in terms of his ability, or perhaps one should rather say inclination, to conform to the accepted standards of written style.

The letters were all written on sheets taken from pads of lined paper, no doubt with a ballpen. The first two occupied two pages each. There were no margins and no paragraphs though each contained a postscript, designated as such in only one case. The handwriting was adequately legible for the most part but frequently clumsily executed. The punctuation was well below the standard that one would hope that Ordinary Level examination candidates achieve. It was very often difficult to judge whether a particular mark on the paper was meant as a full-stop or a comma (or even had any significance!) but there certainly weren't enough of either by the ordinary canons. About a third of the sentences had no full-stop. About a third began without a capital letter, but initial capitals regularly appeared on names (though not internally in McDonald ) and the pronoun I was always capitalised. Of the three opening salutations, two had full-stops, rather than the conventional comma, and the third was unpunctuated. The placing of apostrophes, where they were bothered with at all, was highly erratic.

No use was made of exclamation or question marks (the latter orthodoxly requisite in only two places) or of parentheses, though there was one use of what is in fact apparently (among schoolchildren at least) quite a common so-to-speak punctuational folk usage by which inverted commas (quotation marks) are employed as parentheses. These occurred around a man I respect at the beginning of Letter 2. At the one place where quotation marks were requisite they were not employed. What was very notably idiosyncratic was the frequent tendency to leave a space before completing a contracted spelling with its final nt etc. The spelling seemed to suggest perhaps rather a contemptuous attitude to orthodox orthography rather than just incompetence. The forms nite and cause (used 5 times with no use of the ordinary spelling because ) are obviously simply defiance of orthodox usage. So also maybe were to some extent I not for I'm not (twice) and even possibly they're learn for they'll learn and to hot for too hot (which last was spelt correctly on another occasion). All of these last three could read back as perfectly normal spoken forms in the English of a speaker of the sort heard on the tape.

Indeed, only the weakening to a schwa vowel of the adverb too (in the way general English treats the preposition to) is confined to Northern English dialect among these usages. The extra s in obviously, the superfluous h in my one regret his, the missing r from Huddesfield, the missing final s from them whore, the missing word is from between My purpose and to rid and the failure to use initial capital on Ripper at one point were all no doubt merely slips. The literary style was in general an unremarkable clumsy mixture of colloquialisms, dialectalisms, slang, telegraphese and journalese but it did contain some strikingly idiosyncratic items. The most extraordinary of these appeared to be the adjective cursen. This is so completely unattested a form that one would unhesitatingly have dismissed it as a slip of the pen for cursed were it not for the fact that that very word was used in the immediately previous sentence and there spelled curserred.

Such a spelling is a quite unsurprising "illiteracy" for cursed whose unstressed vowel could be expected to have the schwa (mid-central) quality such a spelling suggests in the area in question, where eg patted and pattered are not necessarily audibly distinct. (Similarly the orthographical form cursen could as well represent the grammatical form cursing.) If it was a genuine usage it was certainly a very rare and distinctive one. There was little else that was particularly distinctive, though the rather slangy expression close call (like top myself on the tape) is by no means equally well known in all areas (unlike eg daft, copper, kidding or collared ). The expression lassie(s), which occurred several times, is one which is also far from universal in northeast England. Indeed it is most likely to strike most Englishmen as mainly a Scottish usage. Incidentally, lasses would be phonetically quite distinct from lassies in this area. Some of the grammatical usages suggest the bottom of the social scale, eg them sluts, them whore(s), should have took; others simply the stumbling of an untrained writer as at Its yours and theirs fault.

The verbal style was reminiscent in one or two places of a letter attributed to the original London Jack the Ripper in which murders are referred to as work and the expressions [joke] gives me...fits[ and [I gave] the lady [no time to squeal] occur. The most strikingly distinctive trait in the whole of the letters was, however, not so much linguistic as graphological. They contained four occurrences of the numeral 7. As it happened, the only one of these which appeared in the published extracts was in its normal British form; but at all three other occurrences the numeral was made in the pretty alien Continental way with a horizontal cross-bar halfway down it. This could have suggested residence abroad but it could also have been acquired at school. In view of that possibility, it seemed to be very well worth communicating to the public of the locality in the hope that it might give some sort of lead in the direction of the person who had written the letters and recorded the tape and whom the direction of the police investigation into the case insisted they were convinced was the murderer. The force used in the killings pointed to a relatively young man as perpetrator.

So, if their beliefs were justified, it was most likely that there were teachers alive who had had this letter-writer as a pupil in the Sunderland area within the previous two or three decades. From his speech it could be regarded as certain that he had spent his formative years at no great distance from the mining village of Castletown, a few miles west of Sunderland on the north bank of the River Wear. It seemed entirely probable that a number of the man's past contacts had recognised him from the tape alone and here was quite an amount of useful confirmatory data that might help one of them form a resolve to come forward and identify him to the police. With that possibility in mind, I prepared a 1400-word report to the police setting out most of the chief observations made above in a form that was intelligible enough to the layman to be able to be used in a local newspaper in the area. I should have preferred it to have been presented with an acknowledgement that the person involved could easily have turned out to be a relatively harmless hoaxer rather than the hated murderer. At that time they were apparently overwhelmed by the enormous response to their nationwide publicity campaign.

Some weeks later I had a telephone call thanking me for my report but no action was ever taken on it; and it was clear that I was not free to make any disclosures on the subject myself because the matters involved came under the Official Secrets Act. This British law had been notorious for many years as a regulation under which any information acquired in the performance of official business could, however trivial or harmless, be withheld from public dissemination at the discretion of the administration, which constantly preferred secrecy to openness. The rather low rating as regards social and educational profile that the evidence on him indicates does not rule out a degree of native intelligence. This could hardly have been very low in view of his success in avoiding detection in the teeth of a million-pound campaign aimed at running him to ground (despite the generally naive tone of the letters and tape and his capability of confusing a post-office address code with a telephone number as on the envelope addressed to the Manchester office of the Daily Mirror ). Of course, when they were so very convinced that he was their murderer, the police would have certainly hastened on past any elderly or infirm person or even anyone with an obvious cast-iron alibi.

Our 1989 paper told the story of how Stanley Ellis and I begged the directors of the police investigation to take seriously our firm conviction that the Sunderland man was a hoaxer. Sutcliffe was apprehended a month after I had spoken out to publicly question what I felt so strongly to be a false assumption. I should think that, if they really wanted to, and of course after ten years if he is still alive, people could still track down the writer of the letters. He has undoubtedly been protected by one or more persons who were well aware of his guilt. However, it would hardly merit the effort or the cost of the enterprise. After all, he did nothing directly physically harmful to anyone. He merely wasted police time. The pity was in the colossal scale of the thing; and the tragedy was that, had he not been so successful in hoodwinking the police, more productively directed activities on their part might have meant that the real killer would have been caught before he could commit three more murders.

Film to be made of infamous Sunderland Ripper hoaxer John Humble - Chronicle Live News Film to be made of infamous Sunderland Ripper hoaxer John Humble Film set to tell the story of Sunderland man John Humble who derailed nationwide police hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper Share Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email The infamous Wearside Jack hoax that derailed the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry is to be made into a film. I’m Jack – The Movie will tell the story of John Humble whose letters and a tape recording claiming to be the murderer convinced detectives he was their man. Police falling for the hoax allowed the Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, to carry on killing. The movie will be based on Mark Blacklock’s recent novel, I’m Jack. Film rights have been bought by movie company Mad as Birds. Producers are set to visit Wearside as they research the film with Sunderland-born Mark. Humble sent his tape in 1979 to the head of the Ripper team, West Yorks police Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield, as well as posting a copy to the Mirror newspaper’s office in Manchester.

Humble said in the two-minute recording: “I’m Jack... I have the greatest respect for you George, but Lord! You are no nearer catching me now than four years ago when I started.” The message mesmerised the nation, gripped in fear by the killing spree which began in 1975. Oldfield’s team interviewed 40,000 men across Sunderland and beyond in the search for the man with labourer Humble’s Wearside accent. Sutcliffe, of Bradford, killed three more people. He was quizzed about the murders but eliminated due to his accent. Police forensic team at the home of John Humble in Sunderland (Photo: ©mirrorpix) Sutcliffe was caught by chance in 1981 and found guilty of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven others. He remains behind bars. Humble, 59, was unmasked as the hoaxer in 2005 because a cold case team matched DNA he gave when he was arrested in 1991 for being drunk and disorderly with an item sent by Wearside Jack. Teams of police swooped on Humble’s house in Flodden on Sunderland’s Ford Estate, making international headlines.

He was later jailed for perverting the course of justice, serving half his eight-year term. Like us on Facebook Most Read Most Recent Peter Sutcliffe - IMDb IMDb View rank on IMDbPro » Peter Sutcliffe (II) British serial killer, Peter Sutcliffe, who is infamous as the 'Yorkshire Ripper' was born under fairly normal surroundings. His father John Sutcliffe was a mill owner. Peter was very attached to his mother Kathleen. He was a loner in school and his grades were generally poor. Peter quit school at 15. He loved to visit the local wax museum where ... See full bio » Born: The Real Yorkshire Ripper Telephone: (0191) 515 3463 AN OBSESSIVE JOURNALIST THE arrest of a 49-year-old Sunderland man for the infamous Ripper hoax 26 years ago may surprise many people. But it does not surprise the local journalist who has relentlessly pursued Wearside Jack for almost eight years. Former Echo news editor PATRICK LAVELLE gives the exclusive background to one of the most intriguing criminal mysteries Sunderland has ever known.

This is the introduction to an article in the Sunderland Echo written by Patrick Lavelle and is the culmination of a witch hunt that he commenced with the publication of his book Wearside Jack which was his personal quest to identify the man who sent the letters to the police in 1978, letters that the police claimed were an elaborate hoax after they succeeded in convicting Peter Sutcliffe as the Yorkshire Ripper. But Lavelle's book was founded on a police lie and therefore it was destined to be forever just the speculation of an obsessive journalist. Lavelle in his role as the News Editor of the Sunderland Echo has supplied several names of suspects to the police over the past several years and most of them have been checked out by the West Yorkshire police and eliminated. Now however he has led them to John Humble, a vulnerable alcoholic who lives on benefits in a council house. Lavelle has tried to act in the role of the policeman instead of reporting the facts that come to him and by so doing he has been guilty of seriously misleading the public and perverting the course of justice himself.

In fact it is Lavelle who should be in Armley Jail now instead of the innocent John Humble who is accused of perverting the course of justice by sending letters to the police in 1978. Patrick Lavelle would be in the small group of writers along with Michael Bilton and David Yallop who have told so many lies about the Yorkshire Ripper story and distorted the evidence so much that they must keep spinning more lies in order to protect their own published works and so they go on to rubbish anyone such as myself who tries to put the record straight. In particular they deny that there was a copycat killer involved in the Ripper investigation and they cant face up to the evidence of the B blood group and Sutcliffe being O blood, and of course they dont seem to remember that Josephine Whittaker was bitten on the breast by the same teeth that bit Joan Harrison in Preston in 1975. They never seriously try to address just why Peter Sutcliffe was eliminated so many times. They have airbrushed all this evidence out of their works because it would completely undermine everything they have written.

Needless to say they have only been too willing to spin the police line since Sutcliffe's conviction and those lies are the foundation upon which their books are built. I on the other hand, have direct involvement with the Yorkshire Ripper, having had the real Yorkshire Ripper in my employment in 1978 and 1979 and I travelled to Manchester to inform the Ripper squad more than a year before the lunatic copycat killer Peter Sutcliffe was arrested. I was the only person other than the real Ripper, Billy Tracey who knew that the police had framed this lunatic as the Ripper and I had no option only to write a book because the police wouldnt listen to me. Patrick Lavelle, like those others writers, only had the published records and news articles prior to Sutcliffe's arrest to go on and the police lies subsequent to that. He had no direct involvement in the Ripper investigation whatever. A look through the archive of the Sunderland Echo will show how he became obsessive about identifying the mystery hoaxer.But the letters sent by the real Ripper Billy Tracey, which he posted in Sunderland were no hoax.

The only hoax if any was that the police were fooled into thinking that because the letters were posted in Sunderland and the voice was a Geordie accent, that the author, whom they were certain was also the Ripper, lived in that area. That was the hoax and the hoaxer was the real Yorkshire Ripper, Billy Tracey who simply mimicked a Geordie accent for his taped message and posted his letters from Sunderland on one of his trips there. Patrick Lavelle is now a lecturer in journalism in Sunderland university. This is a follow up book to Patrick Lavelle's first book titled Wearside Jack. Patrick Lavelle and former Chief Constable Keith Hellawell in interview about the Yorkshire Ripper. Neither of them had any direct involvement in the Yorkshire Ripper investigation. Hellawell considered himself an expert on Peter Sutcliffe and he was the only policeman on record as visiting Sutcliffe in custody. At that stage everyone believed that Sutcliffe was the Yorkshire Ripper.

Question: What was the name of the infamous 'The Yorkshire Ripper'?
Answer: Peter Sutcliffe