Yorkshire Ripper: Peter Sutcliffe's timeline of terror across the region
Jon Hill reports
Serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, has died in hospital after contracting Covid-19.
The 74-year-old had been serving a life term for murdering 13 women across Yorkshire and the North West between 1975 and 1980.
Sutcliffe had reportedly refused treatment for coronavirus after he was transferred to University Hospital of North Durham from maximum security HMP Frankland.
His death comes after close to four decades in custody.
In May 1981, he was jailed for 20 life terms at the Old Bailey, the judge recommending a minimum sentence of 30 years.
Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe dies 'after contracting Covid'
The day the Yorkshire Ripper told me he “did some bad things”
On January 1981 and after six years of murder, six years of terror across the North, Peter Sutcliffe had been caught.
He was caught when two policemen in Sheffield spotted a brown Rover in January 1981, and noticed the car's registration plate did not match the tax disc.
The ripper was inside the vehicle with a sex worker, and came to the officers' attention because he fit the description of the Yorkshire Ripper.
West Yorkshire's then Chief Constable may have expressed his delight at the arrest, but for the families of Sutcliffe's victims the horror the anguish was to endure.
13 women died at his hands - 23 children were left without their mothers.
The fear he created on the streets of West Yorkshire began with the murder of Wilma McCann in October 1975.
He had attacked people before the killing, but never, as far as we know, had taken a life.
The murder of Wilma McCann sparked a huge police operation, including 11,000 interviews, but no arrests were made, allowing Sutcliffe to continue to kill.
ITV Calendar Presenter Duncan Wood spoke Wilma McCann's son Richard McCann about the news of his death.
Sutcliffe would go on to murder 12 more women and attack several others until his arrest in 1981 despite leaving a trail of evidence behind him over the years, including descriptions from survivors.
After one attempted murder, he left tyre tracks, and on the body of victim Emily Jackson, who he killed in 1976, he left a boot print on her thigh.
He also left a boot print on the bed clothes of Patricia "Tina" Atkinson, a sex worker from Bradford who he killed in her flat in 1977.
He narrowly avoided arrest later that year when a £5 note was found inside the handbag of Jean Jordan that was traced to employees who could have received it in their wages.
Sutcliffe was one of 5,000 men police interviewed over three months, but he was able to use a family party as an alibi. Sutcliffe would be interviewed a total of nine times by police before his final arrest.
A huge team of officers collected thousands of pieces of evidence, but without computers detectives failed to join the dots in the vast card index and while the manhunt dragged on the entire region was gripped by fear every woman a potential victim, every man a possible suspect.
The victims of Sutcliffe's reign of terror:
Sutcliffe’s five-year reign of terror claimed the lives of 13 women, though police suspect that number could be higher. His known victims were:
Wilma McCann, 28, from Chapeltown, Leeds, who was killed in October 1975.
Emily Jackson, 42, a prostitute and mother-of-three from Morley, Leeds. Killed on January 20, 1976.
Irene Richardson, 28, a mother-of-two from Chapeltown, Leeds. Killed on February 6, 1977.
Patricia Atkinson, 32, a mother-of-three from Manningham, Bradford. Killed on April 24, 1977.
Jayne MacDonald, 16, a shop assistant from Leeds. Killed on June 26, 1977.
Jean Jordan, 21, from Manchester, who died between September 30 and October 11, 1977.
Yvonne Pearson, 22, from Bradford. Murdered between January 20 and March 26, 1978.
Helen Rytka, 18, from Huddersfield. Murdered on January 31, 1978.
Vera Millward, 40, a mother-of-seven from Manchester, who was killed on May 16, 1978.
Josephine Whitaker, 19, a building society worker from Halifax. Killed on April 4, 1979.
Barbara Leach, 20, a student who was murdered while walking in Bradford on September 1, 1979.
Marguerite Walls, 47, a civil servant from Leeds who was murdered on August 20, 1980
Jacqueline Hill, 20, a student, who was found at Headingley on November 16, 1980.
While awaiting for trial for drink-drinking in 1980, he killed two more women, 47-year-old Marguerite Walls and Jacqueline Hill, 20, a student at Leeds University.
Sutcliffe would go for several months without attacking but would also kill in a matter of weeks.
In January 1978, the same month the police dropped their inquiries into the owner of the £5, he murdered 21-year-old Yvonne Pearson and killed again 10 days later, his victim an 18-year-old sex worker Helen Rytka from Huddersfield.
In May that year he would kill Vera Millward in an attack in the car park at the Manchester Royal Infirmary.
He would not attack again until April 1979, killing Josephine Whitaker, a 19-year-old building society clerk.
When he was arrested the firm where he worked as a lorry driver were taken by surpirse and revealed the missed chances.
One of the main reasons detectives didn't catch him sooner was because they were looking for the wrong man.
A cruel hoaxer, Wearside Jack, sent them on a wild goose chase to the North East while they missed chance after chance closer to home.
In the end it was purely luck and good police work that caught the Ripper.
False number plates proved to be Sutcliffe's downfall.
He was arrested in Sheffield by South Yorkshire Police in January 1981 before being transferred to West Yorkshire Police who he eventually confessed all to.
At his Old Bailey trial in 1981 Sutcliffe was found guilty of 13 murders and 7 attempted murders, given 20 life sentences and sent to prison.
At his Old Bailey trial, Sutcliffe said: “It was just a miracle they did not apprehend me earlier – they had all the facts.”
In 2010 he was told he would never be set free.
After years at Broadmoor psycharitric hospital he was transferred to Frankland Prison in Durham.
He was admitted to hospital in recent weeks with heart problems, but re-admitted with Covid 19, from which he never recovered.