Sutcliffe murdered 13 women in the 1970s
Peter Sutcliffe – the serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper – has died in prison aged 74, it has been revealed.
Sutcliffe was serving a whole life sentence for murdering 13 women across Yorkshire and north-west England in the 1970s.
He was sentenced to 20 concurrent life sentences on May 22nd, 1981, but that was extended to a whole life tariff in 2010.
Sutcliffe spent 30 years in Broadmoor Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Berkshire, before being transferred to HMP Frankland in Durham in 2016.
Sutcliffe’s victims worked mostly in prostitution, and during his trial at the Old Bailey in May 1981, he claimed he had received orders from God to kill sex workers.
The Yorkshire Ripper’s first victim was 28-year-old mother-of-four Wilma McCann, who was stabbed and bludgeoned to death with a hammer in October 1975.
Six of Peter Sutcliffe’s victims. (Photo: Getty)McCann’s son Richard spoke to the BBC earlier this morning, and said:
“The attention he [Sutcliffe] has had over the years, the continuous news stories that we’ve suffered over the years, there is some form of conclusion to that.
“I am sure a lot of the families, surviving children of the victims may well be glad he has gone and they have a right to feel like that.”
Richard McCann said learning to forgive the killer had helped to ease his anger.
He added, “I am sorry to hear he has passed away. It’s not something I could have said in the past when I was consumed with anger,” he said.
Sutcliffe’s victims were killed between 1975 and 1980, and it prompted a massive police operation. Over the course of the investigation, Sutcliffe was arrested and interrogated nine times before finally being convicted in 1981.
The police’s efforts were misdirected by a hoax caller from Sunderland claiming to be the killer – but Sutcliffe’s surviving victims asserted he was local to Yorkshire.
