It was November 12 this year, a month ago that is, when Peter Sutcliffe breathed his last at Frankland Prison in Durham, from complications of Covid-19 at the age of 74.
The "Yorkshire Ripper" as he became known, had pleaded guilty to 13 murders and seven attempted murders when he was arrested in 1981. He suffered from underlying medical conditions. He suffered from angina, diabetes and near blindness after being attacked by a fellow inmate. He died in hospital, while according to what the BBC had written, he had refused treatment against Covid-19.
Now the life of "The Yorkshire Ripper" is becoming a documentary on Netflix and debuting in our country this Wednesday bringing to the surface, among other things, the institutional sexism that resulted in the delay in his arrest.
His gruesome action
Over five years, from 1975 to 1980, Sutcliffe murdered 13 women in Yorkshire and the north-west of England. All of the attacks took place in West Yorkshire, while two took place in Manchester.
He was officially diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He spent three decades at Broadmoor Hospital before being transferred to Durham Prison in 2016, serving 20 life sentences.
In August 1974 he married his wife Sonia and a year later he started the murders.
Like other serial killers in history, he said he was on a "mission from God" to murder extradited women. However, his victims also included women who were not extradited.
The first killing took place in October 1975, when he killed 28-year-old Wilma McCann, a mother of four. He attacked her with a hammer and stabbed her 15 times.
His youngest victim was a 14-year-old girl who he also attacked with a hammer, hitting her five times on the head, with the girl eventually managing to survive.
He earned the nickname "The Ripper" from his "habit" of mutilating women he attacked, while during his tenure, the media spoke of an informal revival of "Jack the Ripper."
His arrest was due to a mistake of his own, in January 1981. Sutcliffe was driving on fake number plates with a woman extradited in the passenger seat. During a random police check, he lost his temper and was taken into custody. Two 24 hours after the arraignment, he confessed to his crimes.
The doctors who examined him found that he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia but many argued that this was just a ploy by his lawyers to reduce his sentence. However, the court did not accept the opinion regarding the final sentence imposed on him. After the arrest and conviction, British police were heavily criticized by the media for the delay in identifying the maniacal killer, who had been questioned nine times during his years on the job.
Finally, in 2006, the findings of the five-year 1975-80 investigations were made public, showing that although there was evidence, the authorities acted with characteristic reluctance.
In the long-awaited Netflix documentary (directed and produced by Jesse Vile and Ellena Wood of "Don't F**k With Cats") - which comes to add to the platform's rich crime stories - we will see information about the police investigations at the time, but and testimonies from victims' family members. The trailer was released on Twitter with the names of the 13 victims.
The series develops in four episodes and embellishes the stereotypes of the time that played a role in the delay of the investigations and the arrest of the serial killer.
At the same time ITV is also preparing a series about Peter Sutcliffe with George Kay (Criminal, Netflix) in charge of production. "We want to focus on those women who had spoken but were ignored. This is not the story of the Ripper coming from Yorkshire, but the story of how Yorkshire fell because of that story," he said.
The ITV series will consist of six episodes and is based on the book "Wicked Beyond Belief:The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper".
Those who survived
It is worth noting that the women who survived the killer underwent successive operations and faced chronic problems such as memory loss, while they were forced to change their haircuts to hide their scars.
Marcella Claxton survived but lost the child she was carrying, suffered from depression, headaches, dizziness. Other women lost custody of their children as they were deemed unfit for the brakes.
Theresa Sykes, then 16, survived because Sutcliffe thought he had finished her off. "I always slept with a knife under the pillow for many years" she has confessed, while she divorced her husband, and father of her child, because of the phobias she faced.
Olive Smelt has stated that "I couldn't stand any man. I rejected the man I was with". She herself chose to work in a male-dominated environment, in a hostel that accommodated mainly men, to try to overcome her fears and traumas. "I know I'll never get back to normal. But I tried," he has said.
Anna Rogulskyj stated that she was afraid to leave her house because she felt fingered. "Sometimes I wish I had died in the attack" he has said about the drama he lived through.
Student in 1980 and artist today, Mo Lea, was beaten by Sutcliffe, however the incident was not officially linked to him. "I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and there are many things I struggle with within myself. After surviving, now nothing can "break" me, destroy me," she has said for her part.
The tragedy of the case, which highlights the misogyny of the time, is that the Yorkshire police decided to divide them into two groups:"The whores" and "the respectable". Detectives of the time spoke of victims who were women "of loose morals". Obviously, these representations had the effect of delaying the progress of the investigations, resulting in the murder of more sex workers, little girls, young women who fell on the sick path of the serial killer. The media of the time even went so far as to treat all the victims of the "unknown killer" as prostitutes.
Despite their physical and mental wounds, all the survivors cooperated with the police to find the killer. His testimony was deemed "unreliable". Their honor was never restored, and if Sutcliffe had not succumbed to a mistake of his own, he might never have been caught.
Read the News from Greece and the world, with the reliability and validity of News247.gr