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Yorkshire Ripper The Secret Murders
The True Story of How Peter Sutcliffe's Terrible Reign of Terror Claimed at Least Twenty-Two More Lives
By Chris Clark, Tim Tate John Blake Publishing Ltd
Copyright © 2015 Chris Clark and Tim Tate
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78418-692-0
CHAPTER 1
R. VS SUTCLIFFE
Wednesday, 29 April 1981: 9.30 a.m. Court One, Central Criminal Court, London
They had begun queuing the night before. The narrow street in front of the Old Bailey was crowded with people hoping for a glimpse of the Yorkshire Ripper or – for the lucky few – a seat in the public gallery.
That section of Britain's most famous criminal court held just thirty seats. By the next morning, more than 300 men and women were lined up outside. For most of them, the only reward they would receive for their patience came at 9.34 a.m., when an armoured police van – flanked by two squad cars, sirens screaming and blue lights flashing – sped past into the secure receiving area.
Press passes had been issued some days earlier. National and provincial newspapers, radio and television all sent reporters and star columnists, producers and on-screen correspondents; outside the court foreign journalists who had not been allocated a place offered up to £1,000 to buy the passes of those who had.
Public interest in the case was all-consuming and every major paper had set aside vast numbers of column inches for the next day's editions. But they were not planning on traditional court reports: there was no expectation of verbatim accounts of thrust and parry by prosecution and defence.
The media had been quietly briefed that, far from being 'the trial of the century', what would play out that morning would be little more than a formality. The prosecution in Regina vs Sutcliffe had accepted a claim by the defence team that their client was, essentially, mad. He would plead guilty not to serial murder but to thirteen counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility – though he simultaneously agreed to plead guilty to the seven counts of attempted murder covering his attacks on the women who had survived – and the Crown would graciously assent.
It was – though neither side would use the term – a distinctly un-British bit of shabby plea-bargaining. The defence knew that psychiatric reports all suggested that Peter Sutcliffe was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and thus met the legal threshold for diminished responsibility. The Crown would later claim that it agreed to admission of lesser offences – and with it the certainty of a short and detail-free hearing – to spare the families of his victims 'many days of extensive press coverage and detailed knowledge of the horrifying injuries'.
Quite what business the prosecution had suppressing this information was never challenged. But the proposed deal would have had one other effect, whether intended or not: it would have protected from public sight some of the more glaring failures of West Yorkshire Police throughout its five-year manhunt.
And so when, shortly after 11 a.m., Peter Sutcliffe stood up in the dock to answer the charges, no jury was present – a clear signal that this was not to be a conventional murder trial.
The court usher read out each of the thirteen counts of murder, followed by the seven charges of attempted murder. In a quiet, high-pitched voice, with the distinctive flat vowels of Bradford, Sutcliffe stumbled over his responses so frequently that the entire performance lasted seven minutes. For the thirteen women who had died at his hands he pleaded: 'Not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.'
Sir Michael Havers, as Attorney General both the most senior lawyer in England and simultaneously a government minister, rose to address the court. He solemnly advised the judge that the Crown accepted Sutcliffe's pleas. He did so on the basis of reports by four psychiatrists who had interviewed the Yorkshire Ripper.
I have met with them to discuss their reports with the greatest care and anxiety and at great length. The general consensus of the doctors is that this is a case of diminished responsibility, the illness being paranoiac schizophrenia.
The script, at this point, called for the judge to acquiesce, the jury to be dismissed (before it had even seen the accused) and for a two-day recital of psychiatric evidence. The script, however, did not take account of Mr Justice Boreham. The judge's reply caught Havers on the hop.
I have very grave anxieties about Sutcliffe and his pleas. I would like you to explain in far greater detail than usual any decision that you are going to make about the acceptance of these pleas.
For the next two hours, the press and public gallery was treated to the bizarre spectacle of the Attorney General – the man charged with leading the prosecution – assuming instead the role of de facto defence counsel. Evidently nonplussed, Havers set out the reasons why the Crown was prepared to accept the pleas of diminished responsibility: he detailed Sutcliffe's conversations with the psychiatrists, their reports and the Ripper's statements to them that he had been ordered by God to clean the streets of prostitutes. The defence – which would, in any conventional trial, have been responsible for introducing this mitigating evidence – sat quietly while the Crown did the job for it.
At the end of the extraordinary morning session, Havers summarised his argument succinctly: 'This', he solemnly insisted, 'is a case of diminished responsibility.'
If the Crown believed it could get away with such a clearly shabby plea bargain, it had evidently failed to do its homework.
Mr Justice Boreham, a veteran of the criminal bar, had a well-earned reputation for the legal niceties – and for frowning on informal deals between prosecution and defence. Six years before he presided over the Ripper trial, he had made this position admirably clear when, at the start of a trial for rape, the prosecution announced it had agreed to accept a defence plea to the lesser charge of unlawful sexual intercourse. Boreham had rejected the proposed deal, telling the prosecutor: 'It is for me to see that justice is done, and the Crown should consider very carefully where its duty lies.'
As Havers resumed his seat in Court One, apparently confident that his argument – and his status as the government's most senior law officer – had done the trick, Boreham was about to remind him exactly where his responsibility ended and that of the judge began.
The matter that troubles me is not the medical opinions, because there is a consensus. But it seems to me that all of these opinions – and I say this without criticism – all these opinions are based simply on what this defendant has told the doctors, nothing more.
Moreover what he has told the doctors conflicts substantially with what he told the police on the morning of arrest. I use the word 'conflict' advisedly. In statements to the police he expressed a desire to kill all women.
If that is right – and here I really need your help – is that not a matter which ought to be tested? Where lies the evidence which gives these doctors the factual basis for these pleas? It is a matter for the defendant to establish. It is a matter for a jury. We have in a sense conducted a trial which has satisfied us. It seems to me it would be more appropriate if this case were dealt with by a jury.
The ensuing ninety-minute lunch adjournment must have been distinctly frenetic. When the court resumed, Sir Michael Havers performed what tabloid journalists call 'a reverse ferret'. He abandoned the Crown's previous acceptance that Peter Sutcliffe was mad, and announced instead that the prosecution was ready and able to prove the exact opposite. The defence was much less ready: Sutcliffe's lead barrister, James Chadwin QC, pleaded for time to prepare his case. After some discussion, Mr Justice Boreham agreed: the trial of the Yorkshire Ripper – a full trial this time – would now begin six days later.
* * *
Tuesday, 5 May 1981: 9.45 a.m. Central Criminal Court, London
They had queued, once again, since the previous afternoon. Monday, 4 May was a bank holiday, enabling would-be spectators to travel from all over the country in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Ripper. Newspapers reported the claims of a retired butcher from Harrogate that he and his wife had attended every one of Peter Sutcliffe's remand hearings, while an 'Essex mother' proudly announced that she and her teenage son planned to be there 'every day, if we can get in'.
The pavement outside the Old Bailey was covered in tents and sleeping bags, leading The Times to sniff about 'a motley rabble ... that could have come straight from a Newgate hanging with only a quick change of costume'.
In the event, these representatives of the unruly lower orders (as the lofty men of The Times evidently saw them) were unlikely to be granted their wishes. The rather less patrician Guardian later reported that the public gallery and VIP benches inside Court One were permanently occupied by those of a higher income group.
A succession of well-groomed middle-aged women with Harrods carrier bags and winter suntans sat there with their daughters or best friends from 10.30 in the morning until the curtain fell at four [in the] afternoon.
There were free seats for the manager of the hotel where the Yorkshire police were staying, for MPs, councillors, sundry lawyers with their children, the Arsenal goalkeeper Pat Jennings and for three men who were commended in another case for tackling a bank robber.
Those privileged spectators could feast their eyes on a long oak table in the well of the court: on it was arrayed the collection of Peter Sutcliffe's 'killing tackle'. Seven ball-peen hammers, a claw hammer, a hacksaw, a long and wickedly thin kitchen knife, an assortment of carving knives and screwdrivers, a cobbler's knife and a short stretch of rope. All had yellow labels attached to them; all were recovered from Sutcliffe's possession – the tools of his trade in murder.
There was, though only the police, prosecution and defence knew it, a singular omission from this grisly tableau – a vital piece of the Yorkshire Ripper's killing kit, seized from him at the same time as the other exhibits laid out on the table. Its absence would have a devastating impact on future investigations into Peter Sutcliffe's crimes, and the continuing incarceration of three entirely innocent men. It also spoke volumes about the honesty of the entire Ripper trial.
At 9.45 a.m., the clerk of the court rose from his place beneath the judge's oak and leather chair and called for silence. In the ensuing quiet the sound of Sutcliffe and four burly warders climbing the wooden stairs into the dock echoed around the room.
Sutcliffe was dressed in a grey suit with an open-necked pale-blue shirt. On his feet were what farmers in West Yorkshire called 'dealer boots' – high-sided, laceless and made of tan leather.
For a man who, according to his barrister, was suffering from an acute mental illness, Peter Sutcliffe appeared remarkably alert and astute. As the process of picking a jury progressed, he twice moved to the front of the dock and instructed his counsel to reject candidates.
When the jury of six men and six women was finally sworn in, the clerk of the court read out the indictment. Sutcliffe was charged with the murders of thirteen women, starting with Wilma McCann in October 1975 and ending with Jacqueline Hill in November 1980 – and the attempted murder of seven others. And then Sir Michael Havers rose to make the opening speech on behalf of the prosecution.
Havers was both an obvious and an interesting choice to present the Crown's case: under England's antique rules of jurisprudence it was quite usual for the Attorney General – a politician and member of the government – to adopt the role of chief prosecutor in high-profile cases, and Havers had done so on several previous occasions.
But it was precisely those previous trials that should have been the cause for concern. Havers had represented the Crown in two of the most notable miscarriages of justice in British judicial history: the trial and appeal of the Guildford Four and also of the Maguire family (known as the Maguire Seven) – all of whom were wrongfully convicted and who collectively served a total of 113 years in prison.
In the case of the Guildford Four, the Director of Public Prosecutions, for whom Havers was acting, was found to have suppressed evidence that supported two of the men's claims of innocence. Papers were found in the prosecution's files, marked 'Not to be shown to the defence'. Despite the fact that these documents clearly showed that the men had alibis, Havers had taunted one of them in court, sneering at him that he had no alibi. The sorry business showed a shameful and cynical disregard for both the truth and justice – and Havers was at its shabby heart.
Almost from his first words in the Ripper trial, Havers drew yet more controversy: in his introductory speech he seemed to suggest that some of Sutcliffe's victims were less deserving of sympathy than others: 'Some were prostitutes, but perhaps the saddest part of the case is that some were not. The last six attacks were on totally respectable women.' Within hours women demonstrated outside the Old Bailey with placards accusing Havers of 'condoning the murder of prostitutes'.
But was it murder? That was the question Havers began setting out for the jury. The evidence of fact showed that Peter Sutcliffe had carried out a series of calculated, premeditated and sadistic murders. But what drove him to do so? Havers told the court that there was medical evidence indicating Sutcliffe suffered from paranoid schizophrenia: all four doctors who had examined him since his arrest were agreed on the diagnosis. In one of these examinations the Yorkshire Ripper had told a psychiatrist about his motive for the killings. 'He said, in short, that he had messages from God to kill prostitutes and that what he was doing was a divine mission.'
If true, Havers explained, this could amount to 'an abnormality of the mind which, in the view of the doctors, substantially impairs his mental responsibility for his acts, namely murder'.
But the doctors' opinions were just that – opinions. What's more, they were based entirely on Peter Sutcliffe's own version of events – an account that had changed significantly between his confession to the police and his meetings with the psychiatrists.
Mindful of Mr Justice Boreham's instruction that the jury alone could decide whether the claim of insanity was true, Havers set out the question they should bear in mind throughout the evidence that would be set before them.
The reason for this trial is simple. There is a marked, significant difference between the version which Sutcliffe gave to the police and the version he gave to the doctors. You will have to consider whether the doctors might, in fact, have been deceived by this man; whether he sought to pull the wool over their eyes, or whether the doctors are just plain wrong. You will have to decide whether as a clever, callous murderer he has deliberately set out to provide a cock and bull story to avoid conviction for murder.
What Havers did not explain – and what would be suppressed throughout the trial – was that the police and prosecutors had strong evidence of the Yorkshire Ripper's real motive. That evidence remained locked up in the filing cabinets of West Yorkshire Police, and would remain so long into the distant future. By this deliberate omission, the true extent of Peter Sutcliffe's murderous reign of terror would be hidden: the killings of at least twenty-two women, the attempted murder of five more and two attacks on men – one fatal – would all be left unsolved. Worse still, three innocent men would rot for decades behind bars for crimes they did not commit.
Instead, the prosecution began with a lengthy exposition detailing each of the thirteen murders and seven attempted murders. In doing so, Havers made extensive use of Peter Sutcliffe's own confession statement to police – a document so extensive that it had taken almost sixteen laborious hours to record on handwritten forms. The confession was unequivocally untruthful – at least in so far as Sutcliffe only admitted responsibility for twelve of the twenty attacks for which he was now being tried: but it did provide the Crown with an easy way to lay out its case.
What the twenty cases also revealed was the Yorkshire Ripper's modus operandi. For police investigating serial killers, an established MO amounts to a personal signature – a trademark by which his crimes can be recognised and defined. It can include the method of attack, the implements used, reoccurring locations, dates and times: fitted together, it can reveal a pattern of habitual or repeated behaviour.
What emerged from the catalogue of slaughter and attacks Havers presented to the jury was something even more telling: Peter Sutcliffe deliberately altered the constituent elements of his MO, regularly changing its pattern by dropping some parts of the ritual or introducing new ones. West Yorkshire Police failed to spot this and, as a result, failed to see all of the elements of the Ripper's MO. This was one reason the manhunt had dragged on for five long years: it was also the reason why detectives allowed themselves to be misled by their quarry when they finally caught him.
But as Havers laid out the facts of the twenty cases for the jury – the shocking and gruesome details of Sutcliffe's reign of terror – the whole picture should have been clear to see.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Yorkshire Ripper The Secret Murders by Chris Clark, Tim Tate. Copyright © 2015 Chris Clark and Tim Tate. Excerpted by permission of John Blake Publishing Ltd.
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