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Yorkshire Ripper (Peter Sutcliffe)
Background
This gripping show follows the reign of terror that followed the first murder of a Leeds prostitute in 1975, cutting a trail of fear across northern England.
But it would take five years to catch up with him as the so-called Yorkshire Ripper never struck twice in the same place. But finally he made a mistake one evening that would lead to his capture.
The Modern Day Ripper
Between 1975 and 1984, Peter Sutcliffe killed 13 women in a five-year reign of terror before being sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in jail.
On his arrest, Sutcliffe, a lorry driver and former grave digger, claimed that God had told him to go out and kill prostitutes.
Many were angry that it had taken so long to catch him. In particular, the police investigation was criticised. According to Michael Bilton, writer of ‘Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper’, the police were using Victorian methods to hunt for the killer.
Sutcliffe was finally caught in a routine inspection of cars in the red light district of Bradford. The lorry driver was stopped by police when he was sitting with a prostitute in a car. Officers ran a registration plate check and found that the plates of Sutcliffe’s car were stolen.
Before being arrested, Sutcliffe managed to dump his murder weapons, a hammer and screwdriver, into the bushes. At the police station, he hid a knife in the toilets. After hours of questioning, Sutcliffe finally confessed to his crimes.
Mass Murderers In History
Since the time of Jack the Ripper, criminologists estimate there have been around 100 known serial killers in the world.
One of the worst in modern history is Pedro Alonso Lopez, known as the Monster of the Andes. He is believed to have killed over 300 young girls in Columbia, Peru and Ecuador during the 1970s and 80s.
Lopez was finally caught in 1980 but set free by the Ecuadorian government in 2000 and deported to Columbia. In a prison cell interview, the serial killer described himself as a man of the century and claimed he was released for good behaviour.
Other mass killers include Henry Lee Lucas, Ottis Toole and HH Holmes who killed over 200. Toole had a penchant for eating human flesh while Holmes built a torture chamber at his home. It was fitted out with acid vats, gas chambers and limepits, financed by money he made from a drugstore empire.
He rented out rooms and killed his tenants, attempting to collect on their insurance policies. He also promised to marry many women, but killed them after they signed him as beneficiary of their life savings.
Female serial killers are a much rarer breed, but they do exist. The owners of a Mexican brothel, two sisters called Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzales, killed prostitutes they had hired along with their clients. On their arrest in 1964, police found 91 bodies at their bordello.
During the 16th century, Erzebet Bathory was a Hungarian female serial killer who tortured and murdered over 600 people on her Transylvanian family estate. She is considered a true vampire as she bathed in the blood of her victims, thinking it would keep her looking young and beautiful.