Peter Sutcliffe

Peter William Sutcliffe, a.k.a. "The Yorkshire Ripper", is a British serial killer.

Background
Sutcliffe was born in Bingley in West Riding of Yorkshire the first-born child of six. His parents were John and Katherine Sutcliffe. His father was well-liked and friendly, and so his parents hoped that he would grow up to be like him. Instead, Peter was shy, introverted, quiet and preferred reading to playing sports. He was closer to his mother, whom his father suspected of having an affair. In secondary school, he was often bullied, driving him to truancy. He was absent for two weeks before his parents were notified. During his later secondary school years, he made an effort to fit in with his peers, taking up bodybuilding with noticable results. Though he took up some sport activities, he didn't show much interest in girls, of whom he was very shy. Because of his fear of being conspicuous, he never did very well in anything school-related. Leaving school at the age of 15, he spent two years at various jobs. He then got an engineering apprenticeship, but dropped out after a few weeks. After a brief period working as a laborer at a factory, he took a job as a gravedigger at the Bingley Cemetery. He was eventually fired from that job as well because he often showed up late. He also had habits of taking trophies from bodies he buried and talking about necrophilia with coworkers. In 1975, he found steady employment as a long distance truck driver.

At the age of 20, Sutcliffe pursued a relationship for the first time in his life. He approached Sonia Szurma, the daughter of Czech immigrants, on Valentine's Day of 1967. They married in August of 1974 and tried to conceive several times; all of them ended in miscarriages. When they learned from the doctor that they wouldn't be able to conceive a child together, they gave up on it. While Sutcliffe appeared quite normal to those close to him, he had a darker side. He and his brother-in-law, Robin Holland, would regularly visit the red light district and solicit prostitutes. Holland eventually broke it off with him because he was always so outspoken about infidelity while at home with the family. In 1969, Sutcliffe committed his first known violent crime. While out with a friend, he attacked a prostitute with a stone stuffed in a sock, striking her on the head with it. The victim escaped when the sock broke and the stone fell out. Luckily for Sutcliffe, she wasn't interested in pressing any charges. He was arrested again in October when he was caught hiding behind a lawn in Bradford carrying a hammer and a knife. While he had brought the weapons with him intending to attack another prostitute, he was only charged with being "equipped for theft" and fined £25.

Killings, Arrest and Incarceration
In July of 1975, Sutcliffe claimed his second victim, striking 36-year-old Anna Rogulskyj with a hammer and slashing her with a knife. Because he was forced to flee when someone nearby heard the noise, she survived. He tried to attack two more women the same way in August before successfully killing 28-year-old Wilma McCann. For the following six years, Sutcliffe continued terrorizing Yorkshire, attacking prostitutes in the night. The cases were connected by his consistent M.O. of first striking his victims with a hammer and then stabbing and mutilating them. Because of the similarities to a certain other case, Sutcliffe was nicknamed "The Yorkshire Ripper". The case didn't attract too much attention until 1977; when Sutcliffe killed Jayne McDonald, a 16-year-old schoolgirl, the media labelled her as the first "innocent" victim. Sutcliffe himself was interviewed a total of nine times by police over the course of the investigation, but his luck with evading the law continued. In 1977, he killed prostitute Jean Jordan, leaving a £5 note that could be traced to him in her handbag. The note led to thousands of men being interviewed, among them Sutcliffe. The investigators were sidetracked in 1978, when they received the first in a series of letters signed "Jack the Ripper", who claimed to be the Yorkshire Ripper. The first later came in March and the third a year almost to the day later. In June of 1979, the sender sent one of the investigators a cassette tape where he taunted them. It was noted that he spoke with a Wearside accent, leading to him being nicknamed "Wearside Jack".

40,000 men were interviewed based on the tape; Sutcliffe, who came from Bradford, wasn't one of them. In 2005, a man named John Samuel Humble was identified as Wearside Jack and was sentenced to eight years in prison for perverting the course of justice. It wasn't until 1981 that Sutcliffe was finally arrested for the last time. On January 2, he was caught driving a car with false license plates with a prostitute in the car. Pretending to leave to urinate, he stashed away his murder weapons after being arrested. They were found the next day when police returned to the scene. On January 4, Sutcliffe confessed to being the Yorkshire Ripper, describing his many assaults and murders. In court, he tried to claim diminished capacity, claiming to have heard voices from God telling him to kill prostitutes. Though four psychiatrists diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia, the judge rejected the claim. After two weeks on trial, Sutcliffe was found guilty of 13 murders and sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison. In 2010, the sentence was extended to a full life imprisonment. He was later properly diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized at Broadmoor Hospital in 1984. He and his wife divorced in 1994. Since his conviction, several attempts have been made on Sutcliffe's life. It is unlikely that he will ever be released.

Modus Operandi
Sutcliffe usually targeted prostitues and would attack them on the streets. After approaching them pretending to buy sex from them or simply blitzing them, he would subdue them with strikes to the head from a hammer and pull their upper body clothing up to their armpits and their lower body clothing down to their ankles. He would strike them (and sometimes also claw them) with a hammer and then kill them by stabbing them with a knife or, during his later attacks, a screwdriver. A few of his later victims were strangled to death with a length of rope instead of being stabbed, while a few other victims were killed with the hammer only. One victim, Yvonne Pearson, was killed by being beaten to death with a boulder instead.

Known Victims



 * September 1969, Bradford, City of Bradford, West Yorkshire: "Stone-in-Sock"
 * 1975:
 * July 5, Keighley, City of Bradford, West Yorkshire: Anna Rogulskyj, 36
 * August 15, Halifax, Calderdale, West Yorkshire: Olive Smelt, 46
 * August 27, Silsden, West Yorkshire: Tracy Browne, 14
 * October 30, Chapeltown, Leeds, West Yorkshire: Wilma McCann, 28
 * 1976:
 * January 20, Manor Street, Leeds, West Yorkshire: Emily Jackson, 42
 * May 9, Roundhay Park, Leeds, West Yorkshire: Marcella Claxton, 20
 * 1977:
 * February 5, Roundhay Park, Leeds, West Yorkshire: Irene Richardson, 28
 * April 23, Oak Avenue, Bradford, West Yorkshire: Patricia Richardson, 32
 * June 26, Chapeltown, Leeds, West Yorkshire: Jayne MacDonald, 16
 * July 10, Mannington, Bradford, West Yorkshire: Maureen Long, 42
 * October 1, Southern Cemetery, Manchester, Greater Manchester: Jean Jordan, 20
 * December 14, Buslingthorpe, Leeds, West Yorkshire: Marilyn Moore, 25
 * 1978:
 * January 21, Huddersfield, Kirklees, West Yorkshire: Yvonne Pearson, 21
 * January 31, Huddersfield, Kirklees, West Yorkshire: Helen Rytka, 18
 * May 16, Manchester Royal Infirmary, Manchester, Greater Manchester: Vera Millward, 40
 * 1979:
 * April 4, Halifax, Calderdale, West Yorkshire: Josephine Whitaker, 19
 * September 2, 13 Ashgrove, Bradford, West Yorkshire: Barbara Leach, 20
 * 1980:
 * August 20, Farsley, Leeds, West Yorkshire: Marguerite Walls, 37
 * September 24, Headingly, Leeds, West Yorkshire: Upadhya Bandara, 34
 * November 5, Huddersfield, Kirklees, West Yorkshire: Theresa Sykes, 16
 * November 17, Headingly, Leeds, West Yorkshire: Jacqueline Hill, 20

On Criminal Minds
Sutcliffe was mentioned in Legacy, when the team realizes that the unsub is a so-called "house cleaner", a mission-oriented serial killer who targets people because he thinks the world is a better place without them. The pathology is compared to Sutcliffe, who is quoted by Reid: "The women I killed were filth - bastard prostitutes who were littering the streets. I was just cleaning up the place a bit."