Geek Girl Eats Cake

The Long Shadow is a seven-part series dramatising the murders of ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ Peter Sutcliffe. As I watched the last part, I became enraged and decided to look into it all a bit further. I knew nothing about the murders. I had heard of him, of course, like everyone else in the UK. Although I enjoyed the show focusing on the victims and their families rather than Sutcliffe himself (and the cast was exceptional), the injustice and misogyny of the show affected me.

Of course, a drama series based on real events is entertainment. No one can correctly depict every word said or every mannerism, which is why they need the disclaimer at the beginning. So, like I do after watching episodes of The Crown, I looked into how accurate the show is and how justified I was to be all fired up.

From 1975 to 1980, Peter Sutcliffe murdered thirteen women and attempted to murder seven more. These are the only ones he confessed to. Many believe there are more. I read interviews with victims and looked at police statements, and the more I read, the more the whole thing defied belief.

On the way home from a party on the 9th May 1976, Marcella Claxton was walking home when a car pulled up and offered her a lift (there had been two victims already by this time). Marcella accepted the offer but began to panic when the stranger passed the turn on the way to her home. She tried to get out but was locked in. The man hit her over the head repeatedly with a spanner, dumped her out of the car, and left her for dead. Somehow, she managed to crawl to a phonebox and ring an ambulance. But, whilst she was there making the call, the car returned. She crouched and waited, hiding, and luckily, he drove on.
When Marcella gave her statement and was interviewed by police, they insisted the attacker was black. Marcella kept saying no, described him properly, and gave an artist’s impression. This impression was the spitting image of Peter Sutcliffe. But the police refused to take her seriously, assumed she was a prostitute, and only acknowledged her as such (the two previous victims were). Due to public perception, everyone she came into contact with who found out about the attack also felt the same way. As well as being left with injuries that would torment her daily for every day of her life, Marcella was described as a prostitute and faced judgment and distaste. Even from her parents. All she did was walk home, and Marcella was only formally acknowledged as a ‘Ripper’ victim when Peter Sutcliffe confessed to the attack five years later.

Unfortunately, Marcella was not the only survivor who refused to be listened to. Less than a year earlier, Olive Smelt, a forty-six-year-old office cleaner, was attacked on August 15, 1975. She met friends in a bar for drinks. Unknowest to her, Sutcliffe was also at the bar with a friend. Olive was dropped home a short walk from her home. Sutcliffe approached her in an alley, and after making small talk about the weather, he hit her twice on the head with a hammer. Olive spent ten days in hospital and whilst there made a statement to the police. She described Sutcliffe. Like Marcella, Olive was dismissed as being a victim of the Ripper as she was not a sex worker. The police told her she must be mistaken.

Twelve days later, after Olive’s attack, 14-year-old Tracy Browne, the youngest victim, was attacked by Sutcliffe with a hammer on a road. She reported it, gave a description, and was shown photofits. Tracy identified Sutcliffe. Yet again, her evidence was dismissed as she was not involved in prostitution.

In November 1980, Julie Bindel lived in a hostel and was followed by a man on her way home from a pub. She managed to shake him off by entering another pub on the way home. Julie reported this man to the police. She stated he was medium height, a dark, full beard, wiry hair, and black eyes. Like Marcella and Olive, although it was a matching description, she was not taken seriously. The next day, Sutcliffe killed his last victim before his arrest. Her name was Jacqueline Hill. She was just twenty years old, and the murder happened less than half a mile from where Julie reported she had been followed.

It was another two months before Sutcliffe was arrested and later confessed. It was the biggest and most expensive manhunt in British history, but Sutcliffe was unbelieveably caught following a chance encounter from a traffic violation. His car had false plates, and he confessed to twenty murders and attempted murders during interrogation, blaming echoes of voices. When his photo appeared on the news, Julie stated it almost exactly matched the photofit she provided.

In fact, during the investigation, police visited Peter Sutcliffe nine times, yet he wasn’t even in their top ten suspects (despite the numerous matching artist’s impressions of him provided by ‘unreliable’ victims).

The ‘Ripper’ label was given by the media as a result of the early victims being prostitutes. An obvious reference to Jack the Ripper, and unfortunately, the name stuck – even after Peter Sutcliffe confessed and everyone knew his real name. We still refer to him as the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ to this day. Thanks to this, every woman killed or assaulted at that time was associated with being a sex worker. There was a stigma about coming forward.

On 26 June 1977, 16-year-old shop assistant Jayne MacDonald became the fifth victim. Jayne was donned as the killer’s ‘first mistake.’ In a press conference, Jim Hobson, Senior Detective, said, ‘The killer has made it clear that he hates prostitutes. Many people do. But the Ripper is now killing innocent girls.’

As you can see, Hobson was fuelling this ‘Ripper’ label, and giving the inclination that if you are a prostitute, you are less worthy, less important. He did not see the victims as people or individuals. Wilma McCann, the first victim, had four children. The second, Emily Jackson left behind a husband and son. The family was struggling financially, and using her body for sex was the last resort.

Irene Richardson was just 28 when she became the third victim. She was a mother of three with six siblings. Patricia Atkinson, the last victim before Jane, was also a mother of three. These women were mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. They mattered. The police publicly, and more worryingly officially, in reports described the victims as ‘prostitutes or women of loose morals’. It was only when Jayne was murdered that this term was abandoned, and they were referred to as ‘innocent’.

Even at Sutcliffe’s trial in May 1981, four years later, at the Old Bailey, Sir Michael Havers, the Attorney General summarised, ‘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.’

After two years of investigation, police hadn’t caught the killer and issued women a curfew, ordering them to stay out of public places after dark. Eyewitness accounts at the time state men made jokes on buses, calling victims ‘slags’, ‘sluts’, ‘whores’, that ‘they had it coming’. Football chants of ‘there’s only one Yorkshire ripper’ were sung at Leeds football ground. It became a pickup line in nightclubs, ‘Give us a kiss, love, I’m not the Ripper’. This was the public attitude at the time. When he was arrested, a Peter Sutcliffe fan club was set up. He was portrayed as a rebel ‘cleaning up the streets.’

The police prejudice and bias were partly fuelled by a tape pretending to be the ‘Yorkshire Ripper.’’ In the tape, he had a Geordie accent. As a result, the police were blindsided into only considering men from the North-East. They interviewed every man they could find with this distinction – sometimes twice. Suspicions were raised toward them from neighbours, relatives, and, in some cases, even wives.

Eyewitnesses say from Leeds and surrounding areas that the tape was always being played, ‘in your face’, as you were forced to listen. The police were laying all their bets on this one lead. They were incredibly wrong. It turned out to be a hoax by John Samuel Humble, now known as Wearside Jack.

This was the biggest public embarrassment of the investigation. It only came to light when Sutcliffe was caught. After sending the police on a wild goose chase in 1979, it was 27 years later that Humble was unmasked as the hoaxer and was jailed for eight years on four counts of perverting the course of justice. There were so many wasted resources, so many victims, and reports dismissed because they were so fixated on this one piece of evidence. The police defended their decision by stating the tape contained details only the killer would know, whereas Humble admitted he sourced all his information from newspapers.

Up until Sutcliffe’s arrest, women were being pushed to be taught how to protect themselves, not go out at night, not wear revealing clothing, and watch their drinks. Responsibility was put on women to protect themselves. It was as if it was their fault if something happened, as they did not know how to conduct themselves. No training was given to men, nor were curfews.
Tired of being dictated to and blamed, women reached a breaking point, and their anger and passion were ignited.

On 12 November 1977, hundreds of women took to the streets in protest. They were angry men were forcing them to stay at home. They waved signs ‘No curfew on women- curfew on men!’

Nina Lopez of the English Collective of Prostitutes organized a vibrant movement outside the courthouse as a protest to how prostitutes were depicted in the trial. Women were fighting back!

In 2020, Peter Sutcliffe died in prison while serving 20 life sentences. It was only after this happened, that West Yorkshire Police Chief Constable John Robins QPM formally apologised to the victims for ‘the additional distress and anxiety caused to all relatives by the language, tone, and terminology used by senior officers at the time about Sutcliffe’s victims.’
The keyword is the last one for me. Victims. I saw an eyewitness account of a senior officer joking about the state of a victim’s vagina after she was raped and later murdered. The lack of respect and attitude toward women is shocking, and it makes you feel so much for the families left behind, the survivors who relive the terror Sutcliffe inflicted.

You may think at least we have moved on.
When the women’s marched on 12 November 1977, it was the first Reclaim the Night march. It continues to this day on the streets of London and will keep marching until women can walk the streets at night without the threat of sexual violence.

The police spent 2.5 million police man hours trying to capture Peter Sutcliffe. How many would have been saved if women were simply heard? How many lives? How many women spared from the haunting memory of his face?

‘Sutcliffe didn’t rob women of their freedom – I won’t give him that accolade – but he destroyed many lives, including his victims and their families. The police, media, and men around at the time were quick to curtail our freedom. I think he gave some men and some institutions like the police and media permission to turn the screw.’
JULIE BINDEL