Reign of terror killer who targeted prostitutes

Last updated at 12:25 11 December 2006


The murder of prostitutes in Ipswich has evoked memories of the reign of terror of serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper.

The north of England lived in fear as the lorry driver killed 13 women and attacked seven more in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Several - though not all - of the victims were prostitutes. The fact that others were not added to people's fears and created the feeling that no woman was safe.

The killer's motivations are not clear but he claimed at his trial that he had heard "voices from God" telling him to rid the streets of prostitutes.

His violence against them may have followed an incident when he was swindled by a prostitute in Bradford's Manningham Lane area.

He began attacking women in the summer of 1975, two in Keighley and one in Halifax. All three survived and police did not notice the similarities between the attacks.

The first fatality was a prostitute, Wilma McCann, a 28-year-old mother-of-four, in the early hours of October 30, 1975.

He battered her with a hammer and stabbed her in the neck, chest and stomach after picking her up in Leeds.

He carried on life as normal with wife Sonia, and was to tell police: "After that first time I developed and played up a hatred for prostitutes in order to justify within myself a reason why I had attacked and killed Wilma McCann."

Other street girls were among the dead as Sutcliffe continued his campaign of killing.

He was finally caught in January, 1981 - and that meant a lucky escape for Olivia Reivers, a 24-year-old prostitute in Sheffield.

Sutcliffe was planning to kill her as well but police who approached the couple in a car ran a check on its number plates and found that they were stolen.

He was taken in for questioning and police later found a ball-pein hammer and a knife near where he was held, bringing the search for the Yorkshire Ripper to an end.

In May 1981, he was jailed for life at the Old Bailey, the judge recommending a minimum sentence of 30 years.

In June this year it emerged that Sutcliffe may have committed more crimes than the 13 murders and seven attempted murders for which he was convicted.

A report by former inspector of constabulary Sir Lawrence Byford said there was an "unexplained lull" in Sutcliffe's criminal activities between 1969 - when he first came to the police's attention - and the first officially recognised Ripper assault in 1975.

The report, which had been kept under wraps since 1982, said: "We feel it is highly improbable that the crimes in respect of which Sutcliffe has been charged and convicted are the only ones attributable to him.

"This feeling is reinforced by examining the details of a number of assaults on women since 1969 which, in some ways, clearly fall into the established pattern of Sutcliffe's overall modus operandi."

Most watched News videos