The Ripper (2020) s01e03 Episode Script

1
It's the worst series
of unsolved killings in the world.
To many people,
he's made fools of the police.
He's waging a crusade against prostitutes.
Bradford, Huddersfield, Manchester.
but life had to go on.
People still went to work.
People still went out at night.
Incident room, Halifax.
With everything that
George Oldfield had in his hands now:
the tire tracks, the five-pound note,
the footwear marks
that had been lifted at the scenes,
the blood group,
the handwriting,
the photofit.
He felt this was only a matter of time.
For the general public,
all they wanted to know
was that life could get back to normal.
It was round about 6:00-6:30
in the morning.
There was a knock at my door
and it was a message from
one of our photographers
to say that a body
had been found in Halifax.
It was really shocking to me
to see the Ripper Squad there
in this exclusive area.
It was the first person
I'd ever seen dead.
At 6:30 this morning, the body
of Josephine Whitaker,
a 19-year-old girl
was found on a playing fields
in, uh, Savile Park.
It's 11 months
since the Ripper's previous killing.
Experience has taught the police
that it may not be long
before he strikes
You're thinking "Oh, my God
he's not gonna stop."
The body was found
by a woman about 50 yards from the road
on grassland in Savile Park,
one of Halifax's most exclusive
residential areas.
One of the girl's shoes was found
20 yards from the road.
And because of deep scrape marks
in the grass,
police believe she was attacked
at the roadside
and dragged to where her body was found.
This murder,
in such a middle-class area,
changed everything.
She was a middle-class clerk who worked
at the Halifax Building Society.
We had been told by police
that this man targeted prostitutes.
But she wasn't a prostitute.
The latest Ripper murder
differs from the rest
in that, the killer struck
not in a red-light district as before,
but in a quiet middle-class
Er Ms. Whitaker was a really
respectable young lady.
The worrying thing now is that
he's moved out of the
red-light areas
where he's operated in the past
uh which makes it now that any woman
is at risk.
Any woman who's out alone at night
uh i-i-is at risk till we catch him.
I was horrified by the attack
on Josephine Whitaker.
West Yorkshire Police had acknowledged
that now any woman was at risk.
Their explanation was,
"He's changed his tactics
because we've made
the red-light district so hot.
So now, he's, you know
He's going for other women,
but it k-- It doesn't mean that he's not,
at heart, a prostitute-killer."
I worked on a local radio station,
which didn't have a big staff.
So if a story broke,
you had to go out and cover it.
You'd get in a little car
from the radio station
and, you know, set off with an A-to-Z
open on your knee.
And I was incredibly conscious
that this was a city
where this man, I thought,
was looking for vulnerable women.
And a vulnerable woman was basically
a woman who was out on her own at night.
And that was my job.
I was just doing my usual work
in the CID office.
Then I got a call to say that I was gonna
be seconded onto the Halifax murder case.
So I headed over
to the incident room at Halifax.
Suddenly, a--
A message came out for a briefing--
Debriefing at the court building,
which was an unusual place,
because we'd never had a debriefing there.
So we thought, "What's happening?"
George Oldfield came in
and, uh, an officer was with him
carrying a tape recorder.
George Oldfield explained
that he'd received a tape
which he was going to play us.
And he wanted to--
He wanted us to listen very carefully
because he was satisfied that
this tape was sent by the person
who sent the letters.
Everybody was
pretty stunned at this.
We wondered
what was going to be on the tape.
The whole place just
sank into silence.
The button was pressed.
And out came the voice.
I'm Jack.
I see you are still having no luck
catching me.
I have the greatest respect
for you, George.
But Lord
you are no nearer catching me now
than four years ago when I started.
I reckon your boys
are letting you down, George.
You can't be much good, can you?
I am not quite sure
when I will strike again.
But it will be definitely sometime
this year.
I'm not sure where.
Maybe Manchester.
I like it there.
There's plenty of them knocking about.
They never learn, do they, George?
At the rate I'm going now,
I should be in the book of records.
I think it's 11 up to now, isn't it?
Well, it's been nice
chatting to you, George.
Yours, Jack the Ripper.
Here, at last, was the lead
that blew the case wide open.
He's given us a pretty good chance now,
because we've got his voice.
They had the letters
which was sent from Sunderland.
And now they had the tape
with a Sunderland or Geordie accent.
Well, before, we know we've been looking
for a man.
And there are literally millions.
and we didn't know where he came from.
But now that we can localize the area,
the field has narrowed appreciably,
as I'm sure you must, uh, agree.
We know what his voice sounds like.
We know what his handwriting looks like.
How much more do we need?
One of the experts
who has helped police
to analyze tape and the voice
is a lecturer in Linguistics
at Leeds University,
Mr. Jack Windsor Louis.
He believes he's isolated
the area of the voice comes from.
This was ascertained by my colleague
in the University of Leeds
School of English, Stanley Ellis,
who, a few weeks ago,
went up to, uh, Sunderland.
Remember the letters were
posted from Sunderland,
so this was the natural place
to start, uh, investigations.
And he had very little distance to go
from Central Sunderland
before he started to home in
on this kind of accent.
And how small an area
have you now isolated?
I think you can could call
it something like a square mile.
The village of Castletown,
about three miles
to the west of Sunderland.
Castletown,
a once-flourishing mining village,
has been hard hit by recession.
-Is your husband in at the moment?
-Yes.
The police have a team
of 100 detectives
making house-to-house inquiries
in the area.
Um, we're making inquiries
about Jack the Ripper.
I was a detective inspector
in charge of Sunderland Central.
The killer had come from Sunderland,
and we had to find him.
It was a bit awe-inspiring
when you realize that, uh
you now were holding the baby.
I defy anyone to say a voice
is not an identifying characteristic.
We felt we were part
of a very modern police force, indeed.
And it was time to put an end to it.
So, there she stood
on the steps of Number Ten,
Britain's first and so far,
only woman prime minister.
Her mission, nothing less
than the transformation of Britain.
Where there is discord,
may we bring harmony.
Where there is error, may be bring truth.
Where there is doubt, may we bring faith.
- A two-hand wave!
- This way!
Come on!
In 1979, Margaret Thatcher
becomes prime minister.
So, all my female friends are,
"Wow, what an achievement.
This is gonna change the face
of how women are perceived."
I applied to do a fine art degree.
So I came to Leeds
with great expectations.
By the end of the '70s,
anything went.
I, at one point, had all my hair
cut short,
bleached, nearly white,
and then dyed bright yellow on the tips.
You could explore these things.
You know, jeans and wearing men's attire.
The contraceptive pill was also
uh easy to get hold off in the '70s.
So that was a real moment.
It was very liberating,
and I was very gregarious.
I could make friends easily.
What's your dress made from?
There was
a very lively vibe at the time.
It was a lot of music, punk bands.
I was only slightly aware
of the Ripper.
I did have my reservations, of course,
but then you think,
"It's not gonna affect me."
You know, at that age you just feel
that you can do anything, be anywhere,
and it wasn't gonna affect
my movements around town.
I remember being in the newsroom.
We were all sitting around the big table,
and somehow, somebody said,
"Oh, there's been another Ripper murder."
Barbara Leach was a student in Bradford.
Barbara Leach left the Mannville Arms
on Great Horton Road
at one o'clock on Sunday morning.
Her house in Ash Grove
is only 150 yards around the corner.
Yet Barbara chose to leave her friends
and walk on alone in the dark.
Along the way she met
the man they call the Yorkshire Ripper.
And he fulfilled the grim pledge
he made in June.
All the women in the room,
our faces drained of color
and I remember feeling
absolutely chilled to the bone.
Whereas the men were saying,
"Wow, it's another Ripper murder.
Let's get onto it."
And I thought, "That's the difference
between people who see it is as a story
and people who feel involved."
Because by then,
I think we all felt at risk.
What's worrying the police
is that despite unspecified precautions
they took after the Ripper's last warning,
he was still able to strike again.
Truth is, they couldn't do much
to stop him,
for even with his voice on tape,
his handwriting,
and the evidence of 12 murders,
they still don't know who he is.
How grave an effect has
what's happened
had on your husband and yourself?
How difficult has it been
for you to come to terms with it?
Well, I don't suppose
really we have yet.
She'd say, "Oh, well, don't worry.
I always go out in a group," or
"The boys are there to see
that I'm all right, or"
This sort of thing. She doesn't
You know, she wouldn't have thought
of going into town on her own,
sort of thing, but I mean,
it was only five, ten minutes away
from where she was, where she lived.
When Barbara died, my wife bought a
bought herself
a new outfit to wear at the funeral.
And it's rather expensive, and I raised
my eyebrows at the price,
but she as said then, "It's not
just for Barbara's funeral
that I shall be wearing it.
This is for her her graduation,
and her wedding, and the
and the birth of her babies.
That's-- That's what's been taken
from us, our future.
People can read
the police notices and
and perhaps let it flow over them but
I wanted to make them
really think it be their daughter next.
Although the stretch is street-lit,
she was brutally attacked
and died of multiple injuries.
The incident took place
I remember everyone talking
about Barbara Leech.
And that was a turning point.
And the university and the student union
were putting on minibuses
to escort women home.
The student's social life goes on
but punctuated by announcements
of a minibus and escort service
to get the girls back to their homes.
We started to be a lot more guarded
about when we went out,
who we went with, and getting home early.
I'd just spent quite a long time
learning how to go out alone,
being streetwise,
and not being frightened.
So, really it went against the grain.
Well, I mean we're all scared, aren't we?
- We're aware of it.
- Yeah.
- I'm frightened all the time, yeah.
- We're worried.
We're deadly frightened.
We go to self-defense classes.
which
sort of, teach you to kick and
sort of, karate.
I mean,
it's no good against the Ripper but
there's a lot of other
weird people around.
There's a lot of women
very worried now after all these murders.
What can you say
that would, uh, alleviate their worries?
I could only say to them that they must
not walk out at night alone.
That is, late at night.
It is not safe for them
to walk about the streets
in the early hours of the morning,
as was illustrated here
and as was illustrated at Halifax
a short time ago.
I remember the murder
of Barbara in particular.
We had a group of incompetent
police officers saying,
"Don't be out late at night.
You're putting yourself at risk.
Don't get into a taxi you when
you're drunk. Don't go out on your own.
Don't drink on your own."
And the big thing in Leeds
at the time was feminism.
There's no way
we were going to acquiesce to this.
Men would go out to a bar
and they would drink with other men.
And if women
wanted to go out and socialize,
they were only allowed to do so
under the care and supervision of a man.
We just thought, "To hell with this."
We were not the ones doing the killing.
We were the ones that needed protection.
It was a very, very
unpleasant time for police officers.
You've got the media pressure growing.
You've got the public's fear and anxiety.
You've got the politicians starting to say
"What's going on here?"
People's, uh
confidence started to be eroded
by all of this.
So the chief constable
decided to launch Project R.
Now, West Yorkshire Police yesterday
launched a massive advertising campaign
aimed at trying to catch
Britain's most-wanted criminal,
the Yorkshire Ripper.
Now, to explain more about the campaign,
on the line with now,
is the man currently heading the inquires.
Well, yes, I think it's the first
time on such a massive, uh, scale
of advertising that this method is being
used within the police service.
It was the biggest PR police exercise
ever mounted.
The publicity campaign
involves a mobile exhibition
being taken each day to shopping precincts
and markets throughout the area.
It centers on the two main clues
the police have.
The first, three letters
posted from Sunderland
and written, the police are sure,
by the Ripper.
The second, that tape played over and over
again to the crowds of shoppers.
They spent £1 million.
They had huge posters and advertisements
taken out in all the national newspapers,
a roadshow going around
publicizing the voice.
The sense was that this is
going to generate a huge amount of work.
You know,
are we a hundred percent on this?
Before we heard about Project R,
we were still looking
for the letter-writer.
And we had our own
elimination techniques taking place.
I fully expected
someone would ring up and say,
"I am absolutely certain
this is so-and-so."
We never got a call like that.
We didn't have
a full transcript of the letters.
West Yorkshire had given us
a sample of the handwriting.
And we'd heard bits and pieces
about the letters.
But we hadn't seen
uh, them in their entirety.
So, we put in a request
and we got the three letters.
So I started on the first one
and, uh, there's something peculiar
about the way this is written.
This phrase hit me,
"Curssed coppers."
As soon as I read that, I thought,
"There's something not right here.
He's using Victorian language."
So I went into the incident room
and I said,
"Look, I want somebody
to go to the libraries.
Could you get books
on the 1888 Jack the Ripper?"
Because I knew
that there had been letters written.
The original 1888 letters began to show
striking similarities in phraseology.
In one of them he says,
"I'm down on whores."
And the other, "My purpose
is to rid the streets of them."
And then, in 1888,
one of the letters said,
"Leather apron gave me fits."
In the West Yorkshire letters he says,
"That photo in the paper gave me fits."
The letter-writer
was using these 1888 letters
almost as a script.
He was copying them.
That started, uh
alarm bells going in my head.
I make no apology
for intruding upon the privacy
of everyone in this country
in our efforts to ensure
that they all have heard this tape
and they have all seen the handwriting.
Every night-spot
from the Midlands to the Scottish border
is being visited in the campaign
to identify the Ripper.
I've come here tonight to play you a tape
of the man who we believe
to be the so-called Yorkshire Ripper.
I should be
in the book of records.
I think it's 11 now, isn't it?
Well, I'll keep on going
for quite a while yet.
I can't see myself being nicked just yet,
even if you do get near.
I was looking at the letters
and looking at the chart
which described
the murders and when they occurred
and I found that there's a fatal flaw.
At the time those letters were sent,
the body of Yvonne Pearson
had not been discovered.
And it was only discovered
after the letters were sent.
And he could have easily said,
"There's a body lying out there,
which you haven't discovered."
He was only claiming murders,
which had been reported in the press.
We realized, everything in the letters
was in the public domain.
And I said, "Something awful
has happened here."
I thought the person writing the letters
and sending the tape was a hoax.
How can we stop
this madman from killing again?
Listen.
I see you're still having
no luck catching me.
You are no nearer catching me now
than four years ago when I started
You can't be much good, can you?
The only time you came near catching me
was a few months ago in Chapeltown.
Now, we were all with the police.
"Yeah, let's hear the voice.
Let's see the handwriting.
We'll weed him out."
All my friends would then say,
"Who's got a Geordie accent?
Could it be them?
Could it be them?"
'Cause up until then, we could do nothing
but remain and be frightened.
But once the voice was out
and the handwriting was out,
we felt a little bit more empowered.
Somebody you know?
You think it is.
And what's that person's name, please?
How much nearer do you think
you are now to some breakthrough?
Well, we're-- We're nearer now
than we've ever been in the past
and we're certainly much more optimistic.
Well, we felt that it was a fake.
So, we'd submitted a report
saying that we are raising doubts.
But it didn't alter things in the least.
George Oldfield was under
such an enormous burden
without any real evidence.
And so, I think when the letters came
he wanted those letters to be true.
There was a dark atmosphere
at the university.
You weren't supposed
to go out on your own.
You had to carry an alarm.
You had to watch where you were going.
You watched what you were wearing.
It felt like you were imprisoned
to a certain extent.
We start out
really strong and powerful,
thinking we can do anything,
combat the world.
And then, because of the killings
we reverted back to
being vulnerable women
which was really very frustrating
when you'd fought so hard
to be perceived as an independent person.
I started to think,
"Hang on a minute,
I can't live like this. It's crazy."
So I decided to go out
the weekend before my 21st birthday.
It was Saturday.
It was very cold.
We met in a pub.
And we had two beers.
My friends were saying, "Yeah,
we need to wrap it up. It's getting late."
They walked up to the park
and I said, "I'm going into town.
I've gotta catch the bus."
As I started to walk down Hillary Place,
I noticed that the light was--
A light was out.
And it was much darker
than the lit streets that I'd come from.
And halfway through, a voice came
from behind me, "Hey, hey, hi."
It sounded like New Yorkshire accent.
So, I was in a rush,
but I turned around and
I didn't recognize this chap.
And as I walked away,
I suddenly felt this absolute fear.
And then I heard his footsteps behind me.
And as I ran quicker,
the footsteps were quicker and quicker,
and then he caught up with me
and all I felt was this massive blow
to the top of my head.
And I saw the pavement
coming up towards to me.
And that was it.
I remember waking up in a hospital bed.
Broke my jaw, fractured my skull
cracked my eyebrow
puncture wounds to the back of my head
lots of cuts and bruises.
Massive swelling and bruising.
It was really, quite hideous.
A couple of doctors explained
that the injuries were similar to those
of other Ripper victims.
Mm.
Mm.
Oh, I wasn't gonna hear that.
And I didn't tell anybody
that they'd said that.
To be associated
with a killer of prostitutes
It's just too dark.
You know, too dark and too sinister.
The best thing to do was to
To just get on.
Get on and finish the degree.
The police came.
They just asked me to relay
the events of the evening.
And so I explained in detail
what I'd done and where I'd walked.
And off they went.
And I didn't hear from the police
at all.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
I think that they played it right down
because they could not face
the public ridicule and anger
that was surfacing at the time.
Project R had yielded nothing.
And it was potentially coming
well off the tracks now.
The year has moved on
since that publicity launch.
It's into November, 1980.
And the worst of all
news is that
The Yorkshire Ripper has struck again.
When he first killed
here in Scott Hall years ago,
it was just another murder inquiry.
Now, the Yorkshire Ripper has written
himself into the criminal history books.
There are many theories
as to why he's been inactive so long.
Perhaps the Ripper himself was dead
or perhaps he was in jail
for another offense.
If there's one thing the tragic murder
of Jacqueline Hill has provided,
it's yet another chance to trap
Britain's most-wanted criminal.
Jacqueline was
a third year student from Cleveland
studying French at the nearby university.
The attack took place at about 10 p.m.
as she was on her way home
from an evening seminar.
A member of the public
found Jacqueline's handbag, late at night
and saw some blood on the handbag.
So, rang the police thinking
something serious might have happened,
and some officers attended in the night
did a search,
presumably a cursory search,
were called to another job
and off
hot-footed it off to another incident.
And it wasn't until the morning
that Jacqueline's body was now found.
Two officers carried out
a brief search of the area,
right here,
where the handbag was found.
Yet, it wasn't until Tuesday morning
that Jacqueline's body
was found by a passerby.
And that leaves a possibly crucial
ten-hour gap
before the latest hunt
for the Ripper could begin.
West Yorkshire's Chief Constable
was at the press conference
to answer criticisms by two students
that immediate action wasn't taken
when Jacqueline's handbag was found
on Monday night shortly after the attack.
If the officer's were negligent
uh then, of course, we
You know, we-- we shall find out.
That is being inquired into.
Uh, it's easy to say with hindsight
that they should have found the body.
Maybe they should.
You know, it was
no more than 60 or 70 yards away.
Um
But, uh, what they should have done
and, you know, with hindsight
what might have been done,
of course, is pure conjecture.
The murder of Jacqueline Hill
really did change things.
The anger that another
young woman had lost her life
was now at a boiling point.
Five years is too long.
No, it's been going on too long.
If they haven't caught him yet,
I don't think they ever will.
Well, I think they could've done more,
a lot more.
I wish they'd hurry up and catch him,
because I'm sure
everybody's as frightened as I am.
I don't go out on my own.
There would be men in pubs
where we were drinking together as women.
And men would offer
to walk as back to our homes.
And when we would say,
"No, thank you very much,"
they would say, "Why is that?
Are you scared that we're--
One of us is the Ripper?"
So they held it over women
as yet another tool
to make us scared and compliant.
And, of course, it got much worse
when West Yorkshire police put out,
pretty much officially, a curfew on women.
George Oldfield
repeated his warning that no woman is safe
until this mass murderer is caught.
Will you be taking
any special precautions now,
in light of this, in North Leeds?
The only precautions that
that we can advise women to take is, uh
don't travel out alone.
Uh, and no woman is safe
until he's caught.
We organized a march.
And
I can't remember how many women
were on it,
but it was the noisiest march
I had ever been on.
Women were absolutely furious.
Men off the streets!
Men off the streets!
It was almost taken for granted that men
would go out and attack women
if women were out alone at night.
Men are confidently walking
the streets of Leeds alone.
They can do so, but women can't.
Why don't all men
consider what is happening?
Why should women be asked to stay at home?
Because a homicidal maniac
is roaming the streets--
One homicidal maniac.
All women throughout the country
are being terrorized.
We just won't have it.
I've seen lasses walking round
all week.
-What? On their own?
-On their own, aye.
The "Reclaim the Night" march
was saying,
"In the night, the evening, the dark
is as much ours to claim as it is men's."
There were women from all walks of life
on that march, shouting at the police,
shouting about the media coverage.
They were shouting about male violence.
It was never just about this killer.
It was never just about these murders.
Men did commit acts of rape
and domestic violence on a regular basis,
and I think that women were recognizing
that this killer would not have done
what he'd done
were it not for the culture of misogyny
we were living under.
If you look
at one of our famous daily newspapers,
on the front you have coverage
of the Ripper cases. It's full of sexism.
You turn to page three
and there's a woman there, in the nude.
And, uh, it exposes this this irony.
They don't seem to see the link.
There've been marches
throughout the country
proclaiming a woman's right
to walk alone at night without fear.
Men off the streets!
What do you think
the demonstration on Saturday achieved?
I think it showed that women
aren't gonna take this anymore.
They aren't gonna take being terrified.
They're gonna We're gonna fight back.
The murders were having
a profound effect on feminism.
For many of the women that came along,
they were feeling a bit of freedom
by being visible, by standing up
and being counted.
By saying, "This is yet another life
of a woman
that could have been saved
had you done your jobs properly."
Men off the streets!
Men off the streets!
On the Saturday,
there was a big press conference.
There were well over a hundred journalists
and, you know, people and camera crews
and things like that.
And I think I counted five women.
This is a story about a man killing women
and the people who are investigating it
are all men,
and virtually all the people who are
writing about it and reporting it
are all men.
So, where do women get a voice in this?
I applied for a job at the Sunday Times.
One of the things I wanted to do
was take a really long hard look
at the at the Yorkshire Ripper case.
The police had actually done a summary
of the case, called the "Special Report."
And this is actually something
that was circulated
to police forces all around the world.
We knew that among the people who would
have a copy of this report was the FBI.
So we made a a request under
the American Freedom of Information Act.
We just said, "We'd like anything you have
on the Yorkshire Ripper."
The brown envelope arrived.
"Special Report." We got it.
I was about as shocked
as a human being could be
the moment I started reading that report,
because the misogyny
and the horrible remarks about women
really shook me to my core.
Wilma McCann
was the first victim of this killer.
Oh.
"During the latter months of her life,
McCann was neglectful
of her home and children.
Her house was filthy
and in a deplorable condition.
She regularly left her children
and went out drinking
until the early hours."
See
that actually describes
to me a very vulnerable woman,
who is struggling
and appears to be a single mother.
From very early on, Wilma McCann
was always presented as a prostitute.
And yet, when you look
at the Special Notice it turns out
that they had no basis for thinking that,
other than assumptions
about, you know,
the way she she lived her life
and that she was drinking
and left her children sometimes.
We're quite certain
that this man hates prostitution.
So, Wilma becomes a prostitute,
because they think
that she's a prostitute.
And of course that assumption
was incredibly important,
because Wilma McCann is where the whole
theory of a prostitute-killer starts.
Another victim was Irene Richardson.
She had no previous convictions,
but was thought to be
actively engaged in prostitution.
If she had no convictions,
how did they know?
Who thought
she was engaged in prostitution?
This woman was living fairly respectable
up to about ten days
before she met her death.
She then seems
to have come down in status
and may well have been
acting as a prostitute.
That assumption has become fact.
This idea of the "prostitute killer" was
absolutely the heart of the police theory,
But they're imposing
this identity on the victims,
because it fits their idea of the case.
I thought, "How can a police force,
which is so full of horrible judgments
about dead women, possibly understand
this kind of killer and identify him?"
"She's a woman of loose morals."
"She had a Jamaican boyfriend."
"This woman was accustomed
to go to public houses"
"an insatiable sexual appetite."
I can't remember when I realized
that Wilma McCann
was not the first victim.
Because for a while,
that was how it was presented.
And the reason was that she was
the first woman who was actually killed.
When, in fact, there were these
other women who'd been attacked earlier.
These were not included
in the series for a long time
because they were not in any way
connected to prostitution.
And so, the police were actually excluding
incredibly important eyewitness evidence,
including from Olive Smelt,
who had actually spoken to him.
The police have told you that
you were very lucky because you survived.
Do you think he was frightened off
by something?
Well, apparently, there was, um, a boy
who'd just left his girlfriend's house,
who shone his headlights on me,
must have seen me laid there.
Whether the attacker saw him coming
and ran away, we'll never know.
Mrs. Smelt believes
that because of her experience
the police should've realized
that any woman out alone was at risk.
My friends who knew me,
knew that I wasn't a prostitute.
But
it wasn't fair to other women
to think that they could go out
safely in the streets,
because I knew they couldn't.
Olive told me
that the man who attacked her,
without any uncertainty at all,
had a Yorkshire accent.
I said all along, he's not a Geordie.
The man who spoke to me
was a Yorkshire man.
What is certain
about the Ripper
is that he has a Geordie accent.
This is undoubtedly the best lead
the detectives have had,
since the Ripper first killed
four years ago.
He should stick out
like a sore thumb with that accent.
They were eliminating people
if they didn't have a Geordie accent,
and then, speaking to one
of the first surviving victims
who was absolutely clear
that she was attacked by a local man.
You just think, "Wow, they really are
never going to catch him,
'cause they they're looking
for, um, a made-up person.
Camera.
Chief Constable,
there does appear
to have been a change of emphasis
in these attacks over the last year or so.
Yes, that's true. You mean the the
the different type of of lady
who's being attacked?
Yes, there certainly has.
I think the first
was it nine or ten, were prostitutes.
Yes.
After five years
and several million pounds
and several hundreds of thousands
of hours of police time,
what on earth can you now do
to try and catch this man?
We feel absolutely certain
that some member of the public
knows something
and they're reluctant
to bring it to our notice.
They may not have seen
something at the scene,
but they know or suspect someone
who might be this Ripper.
I do hope they'll come forward.
I just remember thinking,
"They're never going to catch him.
They will never catch him."
You're saying You're saying
that he's grossly abnormal,
and yet he can appear
in the form of a normal man.
-Absolutely.
-Right. That's all I wanted to know.
They're not gonna catch him.
He's one step ahead.
Th-- They're never gonna catch him.
Does this person enjoy the thought
that so many people
are living behind locked doors after dark?
Yes, and that's the feature
of a psychopath.
Never.
Never. Never, never.
What is a psychopath
and what do we have to look for?
There is no definition of a psychopath
but they do not learn by their mistakes.
They are cold and callous.
Now, if he's under pressure now,
we could have another murder next week.
If it's not too bad,
it could be next month.
If things have settled down,
It could be next year.
We always had a fear
in the investigation
that we'd had another one.
I remember,
one of my colleagues came in and said,
"A sergeant and a PC
doing their duty
down in Sheffield,
in the Sheffield area
saw a car
saw a man and woman in the car.
But the number plates when they checked
didn't relate to the vehicle.
It was a Rover.
The number plates, uh,
related to another vehicle altogether.
So, they realized
he'd committed a criminal offense.
They took him into the police station
for the vehicle offense.
But then the officer saw an image,
uh, a photofit image of a person,
um, identified or suspected
to be the Yorkshire Ripper
and this man looked very similar.
So, being a good police officer,
he thought
"Right.
I will go back to that place,
and I will search it."
So he went back to that place.
He carefully searched that area.
He went through it meticulously.
He didn't call the team in.
He did it himself.
He found the hammer
and then he found the knife.