 Ynw i fewn i gweithio, ac ydych i mi ddim yn ysgrifennu i mi. Mae gennydd Argyntarr, ac am Julio, ym Ysgrifennu Cyngor a Ysgrifennu Cyfrwythol Llywodraeth Cymru. Felly, mae'n gweithio i ddim yn gweithio i ysgrifennu ym Fynghor a Llywodraeth Cyfrwythol Cymru. Cymru Cyfrwythol Cymru yn y Llywodraeth Llywodraeth Cymru, byddwn yn ddiwylliant ar y Cyfrwyth Llywodraeth Cyfrwythol Cymru, Gynnwch Some Of The Best And Brightest Future Lawyers fo'i ganneddynial. Ciffur Chans has opportunities for students from first year onwards. You can find out more by visiting their website. Now we have the pleasure of having Ray Taff with us. He is a guest lecturer and former detective constable with The West Yorkshire Police. He will be talking to us today about the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, and we can't wait to hear from him. He will take some questions at the end at which point we are going to turn off the recording, Felly, byddai am yw ddigon i'n ddigon i'ch gree i'r cysylltio, Felirを felw sydd i'u gael agorffodol a cherdd. Yn gyfrifbwydänod, a'r ddweud wrth iddyn nhw'n ddweud fel hynny, rwyf am ydych chi'n defnyddio mi i chi. Yn gyfrifbwyd yn erbyg o hynny, dwi wedi bod i'n gwleidio'n deary'n adeiladau. Rwyf wedi bod wedi'u gennym ni am y gwrthodol yma, rwyf wedi bod nhw fydd yr ystafell yn goll, ac mae'n cael eu cwmio'r oedd yn ddywodol yn wrefwyr hwnnw diolch gwych, aleu'r orioedd yn gwybodion yna erioedd yn gyfyrdd yr oedau'r lle mae hynny yn ymddangos o 65 a rwy'n ddigonwch chi. Mae gennymw flynyddoedd a dyma i gael eich hollro hollrwydd. Abertaeth, mae'n cael pob yn ddigonwch ers ffwrdd o'r ddigonwch o gyfrifbwyr hwnna, mae'n cael fod yn ddigonwy, a oed i gofyn o'r rhan, Rwy'n cael ei neb yn dychydig oedd yn wneud yng Nghyrch, wrth gwneud mwy o maen nhw'n mynd i mewn awr, a rwyf yn ddigon i ddoch nid o'r ddweud, ond rydyn ni'n ei ddweud ond bynnig yn drwy'r cyflwyniad arall. Yn dyn nhw'n gallu'n gilytныu? Rydyn ni'n ddweud i'r gyflyn o'r llym, ond rydyn ni'n ddweud i'r cyflwyniad i gael unrhyw mai'n meddwl cysyllt hwn. Rydyn ni'n edrych yn ddweud i'r ddesmwn? And he said yes." And I said, Well, student, he said yes, whereabouts, Cambridge. That got my attention. Thought about it afterwards. And I thought, well, and he told me the context I'm not going to go on to that because we're going to cover it. But I thought if I approach Cambridge, if I approach Cambridge and ask them whether this would be a benefit to students potentially, the worst anybody can ever say to me is no. Mae gwasiat gael hyn, sut daeth yn dded attacked i ddodod, ond mae hefyd yn gwlad ni Peihau'r dda i yn ymgyrch. Felly mae'n ddiweddol o e-mails o'i addysgu, â'i byw yn gweithio ddod. Mae'n ddod wedi wneud wrth i'n gawdd, ac mae'n ddod. Brunio'r ddyn ni'n amser. Ond mae'n ddyn i'n gweithio'r gwahiddau, mae'n gweithio'r gymuned yng Nghymru. A at gael yng nghymru a'i ddod yn oesllwerd llwniol yn cyffredinol, majestywyd mewn bydwyd. I always wanted to be a detective, nothing more, never achieve constable, I just want to investigate crime and serious crime and I'm lucky because I did. I worked in drug squad and regional crime squad, which is the forum of the National Crime Agency and I used to teach people how to follow people without them knowing they were being followed. That's the theory didn't always work out but I did my best in teaching them, so here we are. Now currently Sorry, I'm looking around for it, I can't see it. It's great to meet my wife, right at the back. I'm here with my wife, Angie, and it was a massive, massive support to me. These talks take some putting together. They take hundreds of hours of research. I'd like to think that every single bit of what I'm going to tell you today is as accurate as I am aware of. There's nothing in it that I'm going to sidetrack you with. No opinions of mine, this is all factual stuff, so there we go. I'm going to start now. I've got that off my chest, but I thought, oh finally, and finally. Because we've been very kindly put up in Downing College, I've treated myself to some Downing cufflinks. More importantly, the suit I'm wearing tonight, lovely grey, it was actually made in Singapore for my daughter's wedding a few years ago, and it's true in one of my favourite countries. I'm surrounded by people from Singapore, which is the icing on top of the cake. Anyway, here we go. Peter Sutcliff was a psychopathic serial killer. When the first murder attributed to him happened in 1975, the phrase serial killer hadn't even been coined. There's no doubt at all, in my opinion, the most contemporary observers that he killed or attempted to kill many more people than he was eventually charged with. In fact, quite recently, about 18 months ago, a new book has been published, and in it the authors list all the murders in their opinions that they believe Sutcliff was responsible for. It's errant nonsense. It can't possibly have done them all. It's just a convenient way of blaming somebody who was in prison for serial killing. I read it, I analysed it, and I'm undecided, but I've been who knows, there's only one person who does, and he's in Durham prison. I'm not a criminologist, psychologist or a psychiatrist, and I'm not going to delve into his mind, except in a general sense. There's no happy ending to this. There was never going to be. But in many ways, this talk is an overview, a praisey of what happened and how he was brought to justice. Within the constraints of a 45-minute talk, it has to be. This is the story of lives wrecked, families torn apart by the actions of one man. And some observers have said, by the ineptitude and the intrangeance of the police, with the benefit of hindsight, few would disagree with that. Hindsight can be a very overly used word, a cliché even, but not, I would venture to suggest in this case. But even to now, over 30 years after these crimes have happened, he still makes headlines, whilst as victims, I've forgotten about the words of the bad, twas ever thus. Can you do it? Can you go on to the map slide, please? So we're having to do this in two stages because that's misbehaving and that isn't. My talks are never about me and they never will be, but it's relevant to say that I worked on this inquiry on three separate occasions, not that I had a choice. I used to enjoy, if enjoy is the correct word, working on murder inquiries, just bear with me a second while I do something else that's annoying me. Murders were good to work on, they enjoy, there's a massive feeling of satisfaction when you detect a murder and they engender a good camaraderie, too. But on this one, we were up against it from the start and we didn't have a clue. It was always catch up, sometimes seeing people months and months after a murder had taken place. And then when another one happened, it started all over again. This is a map of where he lived, was arrested and where the murders took place. I very rarely use this, but he was from this neck of the woods who murders in all the highlighted ones. Leeds, Halifax, Huddersfield, Manchester, and eventually, for those of you who know the north of England, just outside Sheffield. When I was on a cruise ship a couple of years ago, a passenger thoughtfully suggested it might be a good idea to have a map of where these locations were and I find it's a massive benefit. This is, of course, I know there are quite a few international students here, but for those of you who know England, you might not know this particular neck of the woods, but it's the north of England, I live in Leeds. There seems to be a little doubt that his attacks in the north of England started as far back as 1969, when he put a large stone in a sock and hit a prostitute over the head with it. He said he'd been ripped off by a prostitute in Bradford and wanted to get his own back. It was sort of investigated, and I'll say that carefully, it was sort of investigated, but the victim, the prostitute, was loath to get involved with the police, and that was often the case back then. It probably still is. The working girls didn't like to involve the police, it was bad for business and the police were seen as the enemy. In September of the same year, he was found by a police officer hiding in some bushes in a suburb of Bradford, a well-known red light area, in possession of a hammer. He was arrested for the offence of going equipped for crime, which was then, and still is, a catch-all if you've nothing else, and that's how it was recorded. So, we had to suckle if recorded as committing a crime in 1969 of going equipped for crime. I think from the top of my head, it was section 25 of the theft act, but I'm probably wrong, because it's a long time since I've stood in it. But I did split it. It's all the officer who was looking for a hubcap that had fallen off his car. He was convicted and fined £25. Not man found in bushes with a hammer. None of that was written down, just going equipped for crime. But even if it had, there was no linkage of crime recording from division to division and from force to force. It was the same all over the country. It was done on small index cards and in officers' heads. It was a poor system, but it was the best and only system we had. Jump forward now to July 1975. A woman was attacked in Keithley and a month later, a woman was attacked in Halifax. Both attacks taking place at night. They were both attacked by hammer blows to the back of the head. That they survived is entirely due to the skill of the surgeons because Sutcliff thought it'd kill them because that's what we intended to do. And for good measure, he also attacked a 14-year-old girl in August that year too and she was just walking home late at night. And he tried to befriend her before hitting her on the head with the hammer. As a car drove by, he pushed her into some bushes. He ran off and she survived. Thank goodness. Can you do the next slide? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm back in advance. Oh, keep it on. Keep it on. I'll save you back in moving backwards and forwards. It was never linked to this series of attacks for many, many years. He was never charged with it, but admitted it in 1992, well after his convictions. And he said to us, said that she was a prostitute. This was a 14-year-old girl, his nonsense. But neither these particular parts, Keithley, Silsdon or Halifax, how red light areas, and the victims had nothing to do with the sex trade. Geographically, Keithley and Halifax are not close and in police terms back then, they might as well have been in two different countries. The crimes were never linked and foulers undetected for years to come. When he started killing his, when he started his killing spree, technology really, really was in the dark ages compared to now. No CCTV. These are just images that put together over the years to just to signify what we didn't have. No CCTV. No automatic number plate recognition. No mobile phones. Can you imagine in life without mobile phones? We didn't have them. We detected crime. Miraculously. No computerised incident rooms. And probably most important of all, the double helix. DNA. Not for the first time I mentioned this and made no apologies for it. And it's somewhat ironic because of Cambridge where in 1953, Watson and Trick, of course, announced to the world that discovered the meaning of life. Not the Douglas Adams or the multi-Python version, the real meaning of life. This was the real thing that the double helix. Later developed by Professor Sir Alec Jeffries at the University of Leicester in 1984. In my humble opinion, I said I wouldn't give opinions. This is an opinion. In my humble opinion, it's the greatest advance in forensic detection and elimination, of course, that the world has ever seen. I cannot stress how important it is and how it would have been in this series of murders. That's not hindsight. It's a fact. Next one, please. I'll tell you one. I might be easy. Is it just that one? Yeah. Forgive me for this. I've never operated like this before. The best that was available was blood groupings. And I'm told even now that that's been thrown into debate and fingerprints. I've not got socliff left, any. We have the PNC, the police national computer, for checking registration numbers of vehicles. But that was it really. On a personnel side, we had some very clever and experienced detectives, but that was never going to be enough. Add it to the mix was on the 1st of April 1974 a huge reorganisation had taken place in the police service. Gone were the former city forces all over the country, mine included. And we merged to become West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police. But the arrival is at the top of the CID. Some senior CID officers from the city forces. So it's as a takeover rather than a merger. And it didn't help. This is the first known murder victim. Will or mean a McCann? Everybody call a Wilma. She was found on the outskirts of Leeds by a milkman on his rounds at 5am. He thought it was a guy forks that had just been left abandoned in a field. The head of Leeds CID described her as a good time girl in the euphemistic police jargon of the time. And that's how it was. Wilma had three young children and was separated from the father of these children. But she wasn't a prostitute. She had no convictions for it. But she liked to drink and was known to have sex with strangers for money. While working for their mother to come home on this particular night the two older children walked to the local bus stop to wait in vain for her. Then they went home and put themselves to bed. I think the oldest at that time was seven. They'd done that before more than once. But it was a particularly brutal murder. The back of her head had been damaged with what looked like blows from her hammer. And her torso had been severely mutilated with a variety of implements or weapons. It was a start to a consistent aton. The killings had started. Three months after the murder of Wilma Emily Jackson was found dead just outside the city centre of Leeds in a derelict alleyway. Emily was married and she lived in the south of Leeds in a suburb. She sold her body for sex from time to time usually in the back of her old van. This is really sore. Did the family had fallen on hard times and she was desperate to earn extra money. And it was to cost her a life. When the post mortem was carried out and Emily was not what the detectives wanted to hear. It bought all the hallmarks of the first killing which had been thoroughly but fruitlessly investigated. It's a paradox really because in the perverse way it can actually help and enquire for similar one is committed but not when you have no forensic evidence and certainly no witnesses. Irene Richardson found on a well-known park one of the largest parks in Leeds area called Roundhead Park. She had three children and they'd all been put into foster care. She wasn't equipped to deal with them to care for them. And actually another irony. In 2012 one of the children finally managed to trace his mother through an adoption agency site and found out that she'd been a victim of succliff. I cannot imagine how he felt. An indirect victim if you like of this man. With these killings the timing seemed to be random but the pattern was the same and body had been mutilated in almost exactly the same way. But this time tire tracks were found and this generated a whole new enquiry and thousands of cars entered of the system and we were always playing catch-up but he had a head start. The then head of CID in the foreground a guy called Detective Chief Superintendent Dennis Hoven who was one of the nicest men I ever met in my life certainly in my service. He died very very sadly and very very suddenly and he was massively missed but even Dennis was baffled by these murders as was everybody else and to me that was the acid test as a very young detective. If Dennis didn't know how to solve these things oh the hell does it? It's just that's how it was. This time in Bradford Patricia Atkinson was a prostitute and as was June Richardson as I mentioned before this lady was the only known victim to have been found in the house again this time back to Bradford in the notorious red light district but there was no pattern as I mentioned before they seemed to be totally totally random attacks. Sorry. This one was the one that this was almost the straw that wrote the camel's back. This is Jane MacDonald and Jane was 16 years of age when she was found dead and she worked in a shop. No connections or whatever with the sex trade and this seemed to be the catalyst the enquiry needed. Sir Cliff had been given the surricade the Yorkshire Ripper by the local morning newspaper the Yorkshire Post by now and boy did that take off even we used the expression. The man put in charge of this enquiry now was an assistant chief constable George Oldfield and he vowed to catch him if it was the last thing last thing he did and it very nearly was. Oldfield was a very experienced detective and had responsibility in West Yorkshire for all crime investigations. But everywhere there's panic and alarm women's groups people travelling on buses separate buses being put on at night time leaders have got a massive student population. Everybody was walking around in fear I can't tell you how bad it was it was just awful. Awful time to be around and to be a woman. The next victim that was Jean Jordan and she was found in Manchester and a clue was about to be delivered into the hands of the police a real clue. A handbag was missing but an extensive search of the waste land where she'd be found left found it. Inside a secret compartment in the handbag was a £5 note a very new £5 note that she'd been given by Sutcliff in advance to entice her into his car. It later transpired he returned to the scene to try and find this £5 note but he'd been unable to do so. So if through the handbag as far as he could search actually revealed the handbag he thought it could be linked to the money and he was right because he'd been given it and he's paid back it back then a lot of people were paid weekly and in cash. With the assistance of the Bank of England a note was traced to the to a suburb of Bradford called Shipley branch of the Midland Bank and as part of a consignment centre 34 businesses and traders in the area one of them was a company called T&WH Clarke an engineering company which employed Sutcliff as a lorry driver. He was interviewed twice by different detectives in relation to this £5 note inquiry but he had no £5 notes left by the stage and his wife Sonia provided an alibi for him. In time another 8,000 people would be interviewed in relation to this inquiry. It was later revisited by the head of Greater Manchester at CID and the list had been whittledown of potential suspects to 250 and of course Sutcliff was one of them. In December 1977 a prostitute called Madeleine Moore who I had met professionally I hasten to add was attacked and left for dead in a suburb of Leeds late at night she suffered horrendous head injuries but Sutcliff was disturbed by a dog barking and he drove off leaving her for dead. She made this photo affair but it was discounted by the powers that be as was she she was described and I kid you not she was described as a drunken slut what does she know well as far as I'm more concerned she's the only one that survived and seen you properly so I think the photo affair it stands the test of time but she also said her attacker called himself Dave but preferred to be called David and she'd been picked up by into the business of course so that was it then we were looking for a guy called Dave no one seemed to believe and I am shaking my head still in disbelief after all this time no one seemed to believe that her attacker could have used the false name he was safe again and quite as continued across both sides of the penines it was non-stop thousands of people were interviewed and eliminated some as a resort of tire tracks from vehicles it was the original plaster cast in the in the soil like you say on old movies some wives even suggested husbands as being responsible as they'd fallen out with them but they all had to be investigated some were seen in red light areas on two or three occasions and that was enough to be interviewed police unmarked cars anoxymor and if ever there was a one were trying to carry out covo observations sat in these cars with hand held tape recorders this big press down to speak rig wind forward get more cassette tapes in it was hard work and it was leading nowhere not that this presence ever seemed to put him off because Yvonne Pearson was the next victim sorry this is Helen Ricker and she was she was a twin was Helen they're quite a her and a twin a dreadful early life and they were both works as prostitutes to make ends meet in other fields they were usually very careful and always arranged a meet up after each session with the punter as they called them but not this time and she was found dead in a timber merchant yard she was the next he was moving further afield again Leeds Bradford Huddersfield it's like a Leeds Bradford Manchester and now Huddersfield Vera Milford was the next one and she was a prostitute who worked in Manchester and she was really really ill she had massive health problems and she was found on some wasteland in Manchester and she was found for those of you you're probably a bit young to be Coronation Street aficionados but there was a character in there called Les Battersbyd quite some time ago and she was found by him that's his only claim to fame because he was a dreadful actor Josephine Whitaker was walking across a lovely park in Halifax she spent the evening with her grandparents close by Sir Cliff went up to her and asked her what time it was and then he killed her the injuries again fitting this old too familiar pattern and she worked at the Halifax building society a very very respectable young lady with her life ahead of her as indeed the old the other victims of course irrespective of what they did for her living if it was back before what it was about to get a whole lot worse Mr Oldfield had been sent two letters the editor of the Daily Mirror in Manchester was sent one and the contents were not released for some time but more infamously Oldfield was sent a cassette tape he'd been a cassette tape I'm the person who has said it again We're now personal it was the ripper against George Oldfield or was it a press conference was held at the West Yorkshire Police Academy in June 1979 Oldfield shared it and our paraphrase what he said at the time we know that we're definitely looking for a man who originated in the northeast of England and convinced that this is the man who has murdered 11 women now there'd only actually been 10 women in this series but he included a woman found in Lancashire murdered in Lancashire by the name of Joan Harrison and he talks about in previous letters that there was information which only could be known by the killer that is no doubt that he was born in the Sunderland or the Sunderland area the net to catch him spread far and wide I met a pattern on a cruise who lived in Hampshire and he'd been brought up in the Castletown area where this voice had been identified as coming from he was given a hard time that left a nasty taste but the tape had been analysed by voice experts who were as certain as they could be that the person responsible was spending his formative years in the Castletown area of Sunderland but the experts never said that the person responsible was the killer they weren't qualified but it was an assumption that police made and acted upon it was on billboards in newspapers on the television work played in working men's clubs especially in the Sunderland area there was a dedicated phone line generated more inquiries more paperwork a team of officers from Leeds were sent to work with the counterparts in Weaside they interviewed thousands of people in the Castletown area what it did do overall to the inquiry was eliminate anyone without a North East accent Barbara Leach was the next one Barbara was a student at the University of Bradford and her body was found hidden under some rubbish a discarded body for all the hallmarks of the Ripper attack one of my dearest friends and was actually the family of the years on officer I'm quite sure you've heard that that term family of the years on officer to Barbara's parents who were from the Northampton area they were devastated they probably still are Margarit Walls was the next one a conshinged a civil servant walking home after working late she had never worked late this particular night she did and it was the last time she walked home she was found abandoned the body was just discarded like a piece of garden refuse it wasn't initially thought to be part of the series but she'd been strangled I'll come on to this one now because I think it's the most relevant one Jacqueline Hill was an English student at the University of Leeds and she'd hoped of becoming a probation officer she was found in Headingley in Leeds an area I knew like the back of my hand that I'd travel past it every couple of weeks or so even still many many mistakes were made prior to her body being found I am well aware that this was the part of the talk that the young man who complimented me on giving it was particularly interested in because it covers what I'm about to talk about although I'm not going to cover it it covers the lot of talk that you study, don't you? Yeah, everybody's nodding Well, you should do otherwise you won't be here unless you just know it A handbag had been found with what appeared to be blood stains on it but the scene wasn't searched Inside the handbag was her name and address and she lived less than 100 metres away from where the handbag was found No one went to a house to check on her well-being By anyone's standards this was badly handled there weren't all this one was in particular instead of being quite as being made to trace where Jacqueline was her handbag with blood stains on it was logged into a police station as lost property I know it's of relevance to Jacqueline's mother, Mrs Doreen Hill because she's the one who took the case that ended up at the Supreme Court Jacqueline, of course, was the last victim this is where the incident room was this is Milgar Street police station where my wife and I actually my wife and I met there which is rather a nice thing we met and it's such a long time ago when we've been together ever since that's the only good thing that ever came out of this inquiry but this is a long time back in the 1970s this was a state of the art building state of the art for 1970s and it's now a John Lewis car park in the sense of late progress but when the Ripper investigation was at its height there was such an amount of paperwork inside on the fourth floor of this building that it was in danger the floor was in danger of collapsing they got structural engineers in to test the strength of the floors desks filing cabinets were moved to the outside tables and desks full to capacity with box index systems thousands and thousands of names were in there and of course Sutcliff's name was in there too many times over the main indices were called nominal index for names and vehicle index teams of detectives usually working in pairs very backwards and forwards delivering statements actions of the types of paper information it was a sea of paper it was like Andrew described it was like painting the fourth bridge and it was it was endless one of the busiest people in the police station was the carpenter busy making new wooden index boxes at the height of the inquiry this floor chart showed the comings and goings of the inquiry the incident room was at best manic to the outsider and most detectives and that includes me hated going in there it wasn't pleasant it wasn't a welcoming environment index cards were regularly miss filed names miss spelt and each new inquiry generated a new index it was just a self-propagating monster I mentioned a high site a high site but it's the most appropriate word I can think of these are some examples of some of the many photo outfits that witnesses and victims provided and he of course suck lifts on the top right of this and these are some of the other images the firm they're all not a million miles away from him but when he was interviewed and I'll come on to that in a few minutes he didn't have a wayside accent so he was eliminated on that a reason alone he couldn't possibly send the letters on the tape because he wasn't responsible for them at the end of January and I do apologise for the quality of these photos but these are the best I can get all the proper stuff from the files it's all actually it doesn't bother me there it's worse on mine that's it's my eyes the quality of the photos are not very good at the end of January 1981 two South Yorkshire police officers were on duty in nights they were based in a suburb of Sheffield and one of them the one on the right had only been in the police for seven months and he was being supervised by Bob Ring they saw a card in an area being used by prostitutes on their clients and decided to have a look a PNC police national computer check revealed this big rover as it was the number plates and it showed that it should have been a Skoda Sutcliffe was asked his name and said he was called Peter Williams and was with his girlfriend she was asked to tell the officer who knew her anyway that she was called Olivia Reevers and she was a prostitute but he knew that anyway Sutcliffe was arrested on suspicion of theft of the number plates and he asked to go for a pain some bushes Sergeant Ring was suspicious from the start and he even asked Sutcliffe if he was the orgy ripper and of course he said he wasn't at the police station when they took him back in Sheffield he was sat underneath a series of photofates and the station sergeant said to me said to him you look remarkably like those photofates he said yeah people always say that he was soon to be unmasked he was with a prostitute he resembled the photofates and his card had been disguised by thoughts number plates he was taken to Dewsbury police station in the heavy wool and district of West Yorkshire to be questioned about the theft of the number plates but as a matter of routine the incident room in Leeds were notified they said they were aware of him and he had been eliminated but they were told to get their back sides in gear and get over to Dewsbury to interview this man because of the mix of the audience I cannot possibly say what they were told to do but it wasn't that I'm sure you get the picture but don't need to get excited yet though it didn't have an orthease accent we told the officers at Dewsbury it stole the number plates as his cow wasn't insured which is true he was questioned by the Ripper Squad detectives and he seemed to have an answer for all their questions although he was described as being evasive well, he would be wouldn't he and he was detained for more questioning in the meantime back in Sheffield Sergeant Ring who had been a detective prior to being promoted into as a uniformed sergeant having found out that Sir Cliff was stood in custody went back to the scene of where he'd arrested in the previous night a hunch a gut feeling call it what you want but he looked in the bushes where Sir Cliff had had a pee and he found a hammer and a screwdriver when he went back to the toilets in the police station he was lodged in they had overhead systems back in there I'm sure you've seen pictures of overhead systems not your low flush things these are systems on top stand on the scene and you could lift the lid up and that's exactly what Sir Cliff did in this police station when he asked to go to the toilet in there to hide a knife alarm bells rang the detectives in Leeds were told and Sir Cliff was confronted with this information about what had been found and where it had been found across the table with two very experienced detectives he said to the officers I'm the one you're looking for I'm the Yorkshire Ripper it was over he didn't look like the monster he'd become and being portrayed as but he was polite and softly spoken and he had a Bradford accent he was interviewed over several days and there was no mention of any voices from God and that would come later he told the detectives everything they wanted to hear and added he was responsible for the murder of the civil servant Margaret Walls who had been strangled and he denied the murder of the one impressed and that Mr Holfield, the head of crime was so insistently done for a very good reason he hadn't done it eventually 2008 a DNA swap was taken by from a man we're not DNA taken from a man for a drink driving offence and he was linked to DNA from this particular scene so it most certainly wasn't Sir Cliff these were in his garage which had never properly been searched either but to be fair there are a lot of tools that most people if you're at all handy could have in your garage the end of April 1981 court number one the old bailiw was full to capacity the judge was Mr Justice Borum leading for the prosecution was the attorney general Sir Michael Havers QC who was the father of the actor Nigel Havers Sir Michael was assisted by Mr Harry Oggnall also at Queen's Council the defence was led by James Chadwin and Sydney Levine and the stage was set for the trial of Peter Sir Cliff although it wasn't because Sir Cliff through his barristers told the court he was pleading guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility Sir Michael Havers for the crown told the court he was willing to accept this and this was based on the statements of four psychiatrists the defence not surprisingly had no objections to this court of action his honour did he was not at all impressed and wanted the evidence to be tested paradox until the intervention of the judge Sir Michael was almost arguing the case for the defence but when the court came back after an interval of six days he started doing the job he was supposed to do and that was arguing that Sir Cliff was mad sorry wrong way around was bad not mad a prison officer from Leeds gave evidence from Leeds prison to the effect that he'd overheard Sir Cliff in conversation with his wife during a supervised visit and he told the court that Sir Cliff had been overheard saying that if he played and I apologise for what I'm about to say it's from its time if he played the lunicad he would go to a secure hospital where the bed had been arranged and came up with that idea Sir Cliff had told psychiatrists that he'd heard voices from God but he must have forgotten to tell police this although he didn't see it because he didn't but by the time Mr Ognall had finished with him he probably wanted to meet his maker face to face sooner rather than later Harry Ognall who I came across as a detective was a legal terrier but a very very nice man too but one of the best barisys I've ever come across in my life but Sir Cliff in the witness box was told to shreds and the medical men didn't escape either the psychiatric evidence was based almost entirely what he told them as the judge had intimated he was found guilty on 13 counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder and sentenced to life imprisonment this then is the only known photograph of John Humble Humble was the author of the tape you've heard and the letters he was a wreck of a man a lonely alcoholic with a drudge against the police stretching back years in his deluded mind he said he was helping them he lived in Sunderland but he hadn't been interviewed about the Rippertape inquiry but he had nothing to worry about on that score he wasn't the killer he was finally caught in 2005 a long time afterwards thanks to some brilliant detective work and brilliant forensic science work and I'm just about to use the fabulous three initials again DNA he was caught with DNA retrieved from the original envelope I make it sound easy and I've just done that in a few seconds but it was anything but easy they had one go at this I think but unusually for this type of offence he was converted to pervert in the course of justice and he actually received eight years imprisonment I think everybody gave a very large halleluia because that's also a sentence although probably not enough it's quite a lot for pervert in the course of justice he derailed it there's no doubt about that he derailed it and probably caused the deaths of a further three victims I worked on it I mentioned earlier and it's easy for me to say that but I didn't believe the veracity of the tape I honestly didn't neither did most of my colleagues but we were told what the elimination points were the parameters and we had to abide by them and there was nothing nothing else one particular detective was so sure he'd been face-to-face with the ripper ie Sutcliff he put a report in asking for Sutcliff to be arrested but it was ignored because Sutcliff didn't meet the criteria at the time he had a gut feeling and he was a very good detective almost one of the most inspirational people I've ever met in my life is Richard McCann the son of Wilma McCann the first victim Richard's a motivational speaker and a best-selling author he turned his life around in Richard I've seen him give talks to high schools where I'm a governor at on a couple of occasions but his elder sister Sonia the one who led them pipe pipe style back to the house wasn't so lucky after years of torment Sonia finally took her own life let's have a look at Sonia Sonia Sutcliff and the daughter of migrants from Czechoslovakia as it was back in the 1940s early 1950s before she married Sutcliff she'd been diagnosed with schizophrenia and had spent time in a mental hospital was this how Sutcliff came up with the idea lots of people think he was but she provided alibis on every occasion that he was interviewed by the police but to be fair a wife or a partner alibi never really rules anyone out but there seemed to be nothing else to a linking to any of these attacks it was interviewed a total of nine times but on each occasion Sonia provided an alibi almost without exception though it was by different teams of detectives so by the time they got the report back it was found in different places and they were unaware how many times he'd been interviewed Sutcliff was vague when he'd been asked they were aware he'd been interviewed before but no matter what the detectives thought or said there was no escape in the fat he didn't have a weird side accent he was fireproof one of the most asked questions has been did Sonia Sutcliff know what her husband was doing and are dumb but it's a question that a lot of people have their own views on we'll never know for sure the satirical private eye satirical magazine private eye alleged she profited by her husband's murders by selling her story to anyone that would listen and friends of Sutcliff were offered money to sell their stories too and the stories went to the highest bidders this was checkbook journalism at its worst she took private eye to court and she was awarded £600,000 in damages for defamation of character in his lot the editor of private eye then famously stood on the steps of the high court in London after the award had been made and said if that's justice then I'm a banana on appeal that the amount was massively reduced but the question will never go away over a quarter of a million people were interviewed 150,000 of vehicles checked and in modern terms it probably cost about £30 million it was unprecedented as far as human costs are concerned it's impossible to quantify every single family of each victim suffer their own loss their own grief and their own what might that be it goes on to this day it's never ending Oldfield died two years after re-attiring and he was a broken man was he another indirect victim on the subject of indirect victims I found out further recently one of my mentors when I was a young detective took his own life a few years after the Jacqueline Hill murder he had supervised the uniformed sergeant who had decided to enter this particular handbag into lost property and he couldn't live with himself he hanged himself in his garage and I only found that out less than two years ago the uniformed sergeant whom I knew and worked with on one occasion went on to have a stellar career in the police service a home office report a home office inquiry was carried out under the leadership of Slaweron's Byford who was the chief and majesties inspector of constabulary and Hedrell lessons were learned that's for certain but it had to be a blame game with no stone left unturned one of Byford's many many conclusions were the last three murders could and should have been prevented because too much emphasis was placed on the tape incident rooms were chased forever Holmes the home office large major inquiry system was launched and Holmes 2 that linked forces was instigated in 1999 I hope we'll never see the lights again I don't think we will thanks to the advances in technology and policing we never will Sutcliff was a sexual sadist who gained gratification through the act of killing it's as simple as that no woman was safe from him between 1969 until 1980 the story is now confined to history books and theatres like this one but from the families who still wonder what might have been Sutcliff will never ever be released having been made the subject of a whole life Tariff is in what I call the proper prisoners in HMP Durham always been for the last HMP Franklin sorry in Durham now calls himself Peter Coonan I don't care what he calls himself what I do care about is the victims and their surviving relatives but for the victims him being where he is is the best it's the only justice that can ever have thank you for listening