Ripper ‘told doctors of mission to kill'

Press, 7 May 1981, Page 7

Ripper ‘told doctors of mission to kill'

NZPA-Reuter London Thirteen women were bludgeoned about the head and stabbed repeatedly with a knife or screwdriver by a killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper, the British Government’s chief lawyer has said. Peter Sutcliffe sat impassively in the Old Bailey (Central Criminal Court) as the Attorney-General (Sir Michael Havers) described in grisly detail how the 34-year-old lorry driver killed the women in what he later called a divine mission. Sutcliffe has pleaded not guilty to murdering 13 women but says he is guilty of manslaughter because of diminished responsibility. He has: admitted the attempted murder of seven other women. Of the 13 victims aged between 16 and 47, some were prostitutes and some were promiscuous, while his last six attacks were on women with, unblemished reputations, the Attorney-Gen-eral told the court. Sutcliffe gave the police two explanations for killing prostitutes. He said first that one had duped him out of money but later blamed “severe bouts of morbid depression” after a head injury in a motor-cycle accident. The Attorney-General told the jurors that the prosecution had thought hard about Whether to show them photographs of the victims. “But I am afraid we

must,” he said. “You will become immune to them quite quickly. You are going to have to steel yourselves.” The killer terrorised women in northern industrial towns between 1975 and 1980. The body of his first victim, Wilma McCann, aged 23, was found in Leeds in October, 1975. The Attorney-General told the jurors: “The reason for this trial is simple. There is a marked significant difference between the version which Sutcliffe gave to the police and the version he gave to the doctors. "You have to . consider whether this man sought to pull the wool, over the doctors’ eyes. You have to decide whether, as a clever, callous murderer, he deliberately set out to create a cock-and-bull story to avoid conviction for murder.” The Attorney-General said that Sutcliffe’s account to the police after his arrest admitted only 14 of the 20 murders and attempted murders and was "by no means frank.” And in the course of 11 separate interviews with a consultant forensic psychiatrist Sutcliffe had spoken of hearing “messages from God" to kill prostitutes, a point he had not mentioned to the police.

There was also a conversation Sutcliffe had in hospital with his wife on January 8, at which a prison hospital officer was present. In it he admitted his guilt, said the

Attorney-General. “He also said he expected to get'3o' years in prison, but if he could make people believe he was mad he would only get 10 years in a loony bin.” Meanwhile, British members of Parliament have tabled motions “deploring” what they called - chequebook journalism” in making payments to the family of the Ripper. One motion, initiated by Robert McCrindle, a Tory member, deplored "the recent evidence of chequebook journalism” and called on the Government to introduce legislation “making such practices illegal so that once again crime will not be seen to pay." Jan Wrigglesworth,: a Social Democrat, tabled another motion at the request of Jack Hill and his wife, parents of Jacqueline Hill, the last of the Ripper’s victims. His motion called upon newspapers and broadcasting media “not to make payments in cash or in kind to accused persons or their families for rights to their stories, recognising that this causes deep offence, particularly to the victims’ families and friends because of the profit being made out of crime.” Mr and Mrs Hill have presented a petition to Mr Wrigglesworth condemning the payment by newspapers to the family of Peter Sutcliffe.