Peter Sutcliffe — The Yorkshire Ripper

Peter Sutcliffe, known as "The Yorkshire Ripper," carried out a series of murders and attacks on women across West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester, England between 1975 and 1980. He murdered thirteen women and attempted to kill seven more over a five-year period, with victims including both sex workers and women with no connection to prostitution whatsoever. His crimes created a climate of terror across the north of England and forced women off the streets at night for years. The investigation was one of the largest in British history, involving over 250 officers and 30,000 interviews. However, it was severely hampered by a hoax — an individual who sent letters and a recording to police claiming to be the Ripper, using a Wearside accent — which led investigators to dismiss Sutcliffe as a suspect despite interviewing him multiple times because he spoke with a Yorkshire accent. The hoaxer was himself not identified until 2006. Sutcliffe was finally caught in January 1981 not through investigative work but during a routine police check in Sheffield, when officers discovered a woman he had with him was a sex worker. When a weapon was discovered near where he had been stopped, he confessed to being the Yorkshire Ripper. The circumstances of his arrest underscored the extent to which the massive police operation had failed. At trial in 1981, Sutcliffe pleaded not guilty to murder on grounds of diminished responsibility, claiming God had instructed him to kill prostitutes. The jury rejected the plea and convicted him of thirteen murders. He was sentenced to twenty concurrent life terms. He spent much of his imprisonment in Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital and died in prison of COVID-19 complications in November 2020. The failures of the investigation led to lasting reforms in how major British police inquiries are conducted.