Peter Sutcliffe

Peter William Sutcliffe (2 June 1946 – 13 November 2020), later known as Peter Coonan, was an English serial killer and lorry driver. He was found guilty of murdering thirteen women and girls and of attempting to kill seven others between 1975 and 1980. The media called him the "Yorkshire Ripper," a reference to the Victorian killer Jack the Ripper. The court gave him twenty life sentences to run at the same time, and in 2010 these were changed to a whole life order, meaning he would never be released. Two of his murders happened in Manchester; the rest were in West Yorkshire. Criminal psychologist David Holmes described Sutcliffe as an "extremely callous, sexually sadistic serial killer."

Sutcliffe began by attacking women and girls in residential areas, but later focused on red-light districts. He was drawn to the vulnerability of prostitutes and the police's mixed attitudes toward their safety. In January 1981, South Yorkshire Police arrested him in Sheffield for driving with false number plates. He was then handed over to West Yorkshire Police, who questioned him about the killings. Sutcliffe admitted he was the killer, claiming God's voice had sent him on a mission to kill prostitutes. At his trial, he pleaded not guilty to murder, arguing diminished responsibility, but a majority jury verdict found him guilty. After his conviction, he started using his mother's maiden name, Coonan.

The hunt for Sutcliffe was one of the biggest and most expensive manhunts in British history. West Yorkshire Police faced heavy criticism for not catching him, even though they had interviewed him nine times over five years. Because the case was so sensational, investigators dealt with an enormous amount of information, some of it misleading, including fake letters supposedly from the "Ripper." After Sutcliffe was convicted, the government ordered a review of the investigation, led by Inspector of Constabulary Lawrence Byford, known as the "Byford Report." Its findings were fully released to the public in 2006 and confirmed that the criticism of the police was justified. The report led to changes in investigative methods that all British police forces later adopted. Since his conviction, Sutcliffe has been linked to other unsolved crimes.

In March 1984, Sutcliffe was moved from prison to Broadmoor Hospital after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. In 2010, the High Court rejected his appeal, confirming he would serve a whole life order and never be released. In August 2016, a court ruled he was mentally fit to return to prison, and he was transferred that month to HM Prison Frankland. Sutcliffe died in hospital from COVID-19 in 2020.

Sutcliffe was born on 2 June 1946 in Shipley, West Riding of Yorkshire, into a working-class family living in Bingley. His parents were John William Sutcliffe and Kathleen. His mother was Catholic, and his father sang in the choir at the local Anglican church of St Wilfred's; the children were raised in their mother's faith, and Sutcliffe briefly served as an altar boy.

His mother was abused at home by his alcoholic father, so she likely faced great emotional stress during her pregnancy. Sutcliffe was born prematurely and spent two weeks in hospital. One of his brothers recalled an incident where their father smashed a beer glass over Sutcliffe's head during a Christmas argument when the brother was four or five. Sutcliffe's father also whipped his children with a belt. In 1970, the father pretended to be his wife's lover to lure her to a hotel, bringing Sutcliffe and two siblings to witness him expose her infidelity. When Sutcliffe's mother arrived, his father pulled a negligee from her purse as the children watched.

In his late teens, Sutcliffe became obsessed with voyeurism, spending a lot of time spying on prostitutes and their male clients. He was reportedly a loner, left school at 15, and had a series of low-level jobs, including two stints as a gravedigger at Bingley Cemetery in the 1960s. Because of this work, he developed a macabre sense; coworkers said he enjoyed the job too much and would volunteer for overtime washing corpses. From November 1971 to April 1973, he worked on a packaging line at the Baird Television factory, leaving when asked to become a salesman. After that, from April 1973, he worked night shifts at Anderton International's Britannia Works. In February 1975, he took redundancy and used half of the £400 payout to train as a heavy goods vehicle driver. On 5 March 1976, he was fired from that job for stealing used tyres. He was unemployed until October 1976, when he found HGV work at T. & W.H. Clark Holdings Ltd. on the Canal Road Industrial Estate in Bradford.

As a young man, Sutcliffe reportedly hired prostitutes, and it has been suggested he had a bad experience where a prostitute and her pimp conned him out of money. Other analyses have not found evidence he actually used prostitutes' services, but note he became obsessed with them, including watching them solicit on the streets of Leeds and Bradford.

On 14 February 1967, Sutcliffe met sixteen-year-old Sonia Szurma, the daughter of Ukrainian and Polish refugees from Czechoslovakia, at the Royal Standard pub on Manningham Lane in Bradford's red-light district. They married on 10 August 1974. Sonia was studying to become a teacher.