Yorkshire Ripper Case Study

The Case

Between 1975 and 1981 a man who became known as the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ left at least 23 children motherless when he brutally murdered more than a dozen women in the North of England, and attempted to murder seven more. The victims were mostly prostitutes, but some were just ordinary girls (O 'Gara, 2006). The search for the ‘Ripper’ was one of the biggest investigations ever undertaken by a British police force and pre-dated the use of computers (Yorkshire Ripper, 2013). Because of the large scale of the case, this report will focus on just some of the investigative strategies used and some of the mistakes the police made.

INVESTIGATIVE STRATEGIES

In his report assessing the way the police handled the Yorkshire Ripper case, Sir Lawrence

Early on in the Ripper investigation, the murderer was assumed to be a ‘prostitute killer’, even though many of his victims were not selling their sexual services (Wattis, 2015).

Wattis (2015, p.2) noted that the case was an “iconic criminal event” and that it had a big impact on women and their fear of violence and murder. She also noted that it placed a number of temporal and spatial restrictions on their lives. Another impact that the Ripper case may have had on society is the police approach to prostitution. In the decades following this case, many changes to legislation have been made with the welfare of sex workers being seen as more important and more emphasis is put on ensuring they are safe (Wattis, 2015).

LESSONS

In his report, Byford (2006) noted that this was a focal point of his review of the investigation. The table in Appendix A shows that the interview conducted with Sutcliffe as part of the triple area sighting inquiry was filed away and was not known about by any future interviewers. If the police had correctly logged all information relating to Sutcliffe they may have identified him as the killer a lot quicker. The suggestions that Byford (2006) made in his report in relation to the handling of information in the Major Incident Rooms could prevent mistakes such as these from happening in the